Pioneers

Book 100: Gateway Essentials

by Phillip Mann

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

Blue Genes... Ape-like and with one arm replaced by a claw, the not-quite-human Angelo and his beautiful female partner Ariadne are genetically bred rescuers programmed to travel vast distances through space in suspended animation to bring back Pioneers - explorers sent out from Earth generations ago to settle other planets. The latest mission is to rescue Pioneer Murray from the planet La Plage and to return to Earth where - as usual - decades have passed while they have been travelling between the stars. But Earth itself has gone through a catastrophic collapse from which its burnt-out civilization is trying to recover. And amongst the remnants of a sterile and despairing humanity, there is less room than ever before for such strange creatures as Angelo. Combining rich and weird alien environments with exciting deep-space adventure, Pioneers is a brilliant novel of love and alienation in a strange and poignant future.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 268

Sample

I am still just waking up.

I slip from dozing to a blinking wakefulness and back to dozing again with barely any awareness of the transition. Friends from the past have visited me, Bonniface and Lindis calling greetings and recalling past adventures … and that is clearly impossible, but I feel warmth and ease and everything is normal, just as it should be.

Three days ago I was as inert as a statue, prone and stiff on the sea bed. Now, if I am not fully conscious, I am at least mobile and washed and sitting in our small kitchen waiting patiently while my body comes fully alive.

Three days ago I broke through the warm surface jelly of my sleeping tank, and when my face was dry and completely clear I took my first shallow tentative breath. Then, when I was breathing easily, my fingers fluttered and that motion set in full train all the complex wake-up procedures. The door covering my tub slid back and I tasted for the first time for many years the dry sterile air of the ship. The blue jelly deliquesced and drained away, for purification, leaving me high, dry and naked. Supported at the neck, head and back I was sat up by the auto-nurse and then my eyes opened. I climbed out under my own motivation and made my way to the dispensary where revival drugs were waiting. The drugs help, but there is really no substitute for movement for knitting together the sleeping body, and we are trained to stump about on numb legs and slap our hands and sing.

I remember my trainer. “Sing,” he said.

“Sing what?” said I.

“Sing any old thing,” he said.

And that was what I did. This time I sang an old song about a drunken sailor and I beat out the rhythm on the walls until I was sore.

Not that I remember all the details of my waking. One never does, any more than a full-human can remember the moment of birth, but I have watched films of my waking and the pattern never changes.

Now I sit, drink cordial and wait. The thought of solid food makes me feel sick. But soon I will get the urge to chew and then I will raid the larder.

Ariadne is still asleep. I checked her on my first day. She was rising slowly. The tip of her nose had just broken the surface. Today her chin is a dimple on the surface and I can see her face. Her breasts and thighs and the tops of her arms are like pale islands of sand rising from the sea. I give her another few hours to her first breath. And I am amused at myself. I desire her already and that is a very good sign. My psyche at its deepest levels is alive and clattering. And she will be surprised. Normally she is the first to awake. Once she predated me by over three weeks. That was terrible. I awoke to find her prim and poised. It was months before our rhythms came into phase properly. She will be glad to find me there and we will wake up together, sleepy and amorous and with only the peering stars outside for company.

After watching Ariadne come gently alive I performed a grim task. It is one of the responsibilities of the first awake.

Beyond our long-sleep chamber there is a small room where the temperature never rises above freezing. When the door is opened, dim blue lights come on which seem to make the air even colder. In the room are two coffers and above each of them dangles an auto-nurse. Inside the coffers, waiting at a point just below life, are clones of Ariadne and myself.

It is an education in courage to look down at the dead sleeping face of yourself, suspended a few inches below the fluids which sluice round the body massaging it. The clones have no dreams. They are as lively as bricks. But they wait, ready in case one of us has an accident.

Each time, before and after the long sleep we must check them. Of course alarm bells would clamour if something were wrong and the auto-nurse would be far wiser than us in coping with a catastrophe; but we are required to check.

I am pleased to report that all is well.

I must have dozed again for I see that thirteen hours have disappeared somewhere. Ariadne is breathing. She will be with me in (say) five hours … seven at the outside.

Being more awake now, I am beginning to ask questions, such as why am I doing this? Writing my thoughts. Trying to describe things. I have no easy answer. Such an activity was not part of our training. In fact I know of no other member of a Pioneer rescue team who has ever lifted a pencil other than to fill in report forms or perhaps doodle.

The truth is, I suspect, that there was a contamination in my gene balance. No, that is a bad way to put it. Not contamination. An irregularity perhaps. A kink in the chain. Something so insignificant or innocent-seeming that it escaped all detection. I find that a nice thought. It gives me a fingerhold on individuality … though I am not sure that I regard individuality as a virtue. It is something that I observe in full-humans.

There, my mind is running on. There is a strangeness about words on paper. I do not know what is going to come next and at the moment I am not worried. In my mind I see the words like bubbles coming to the surface of a liquid. Something causes those bubbles. I want to discover that cause.

Apart from my waking first, this awakening has not been quite like the others. Not only do I feel more alive … more me … but I awoke with an extraordinary dream that will not leave me. I have already mentioned that dozing dream of friends, well this dream was different. I was climbing a mountain (I have climbed many mountains) and behind me was climbing a full-human that I seemed to know. We were climbing up an almost sheer face of grey stone and had reached that point in a climb at which a mountain seems to have a personality of its own which is pitted against you. I looked up and saw that we still had a long way to go, that there was an overhang coming which would require all our strength and courage. I explored with my fingers up the sheer face. I found a crevice and worked my blunt fingers into it. I made sure my purchase was firm and then called to my companion below that I was moving up. He looked up at me and his face under his helmet was dusty and streaked with sweat. He nodded. Then I lifted. Having great strength in my arms I was able to lift myself bodily until my face was above the crevice and I could see a ledge which ran like a diagonal pathway directly across the stone face. With one reach I had my arm over the ledge. A pull and I was over cleanly (no small stones dislodged) and found myself lying on a comfortable sandy path.

I squirmed round and offered my arm to my companion who was spread along the cliff holding with toe and finger. He could not quite reach my hand. I saw him transfer all his weight to his left foot and then reach with his right hand. He brushed my fingers and then his toehold flaked away and he fell. The rope jerked as it ran out of slack and I saw him spinning like a spider at the end of its thread.

All would have been well, but in my hands the rope turned to clay and parted. He did not fall immediately but hung there in space staring up at me. He called something strange. He said, “You’re almost human, but not quite.” And then he fell, turning over and over like a scrap of paper.

I don’t remember waking from this dream, but of course I did. I glided from sleep and found myself stretched on my bunk gripping the bar. Those words have stayed with me though I cannot remember my companion’s face. “You’re almost human, but not quite.”

Even as I write those words I feel a stillness. They carry more meaning than I understand. I am still very dozy.

Anyway. Today must be a day for memories. My mind is off again. I am thinking about stillness and I remember a full-human I once worked with. He was an evil man in many ways. The kind of man who laughs when you cut yourself and then starts to tell you about the time he injured himself. But I quite liked him. At least he was nearly as big as me and that pleased me as I don’t like taking orders from small men. But we were working out from San Francisco Write-Off, about forty miles inland. I was very young then. It was only some twenty or so years since my first waking.

Someone in the South Pacific Safety had picked up a radio call and we were investigating. It was a slow jog, working our way down the old roads, cutting a path. Anyway, in the long nights this human and I would talk. He’d led an interesting life, always in trouble, and he had lots of stories of the olden days, as he called them. He meant the days before the Catastrophe. Once he’d been in prison and he described what it was like to stand in a court of law and hear your life picked apart in graceless dry phrases … Isn’t that strange, I can remember his words but not his name … He told me how the conceits that gave his life glamour were drained of their essence. He told me that when he saw his life unwound like a bandage that still bears the marks of bloody sores, he felt a great stillness.

That is what I feel as I face that unpleasant truth. Stillness. For it is a truth that I am not quite human, but almost.

When he had finished speaking my nameless companion just sat brooding. I suppose when you can truly see yourself there is not much more to be said after all. Silence is best.

But am I jealous of the full-humans? Have I been brooding on that? And if so, for how long? Centuries probably. I have just heard the doors on Ariadne’s sleeping tub roll back.

I have watched Ariadne limber herself out of her coffer. It is a long time since I have seen her do this. Sitting upright she slid her arms along the bars which run along the side of the tank and pulled herself forwards. The auto-nurse helped. Her legs bent at the knees as they slid over the edge of the support platform and then she sat for several minutes, her feet flat on the floor, gathering her strength. She had not registered that I was already awake. Her eyes were open but gazed vacantly. She was dozing. Then she pulled herself to her feet and tried to walk. Her legs did not know what to do and she slewed round on her heels and had to catch herself and lift herself upright with the strength of her arms. Next she worked her toes on one foot and the leg inched forwards. It seemed painful and I wanted to help, but I didn’t. We must all learn alone and she would not have thanked me for my strong arm. Slowly she advanced one foot and then the next.

Gradually she worked her way out of our long-sleep chamber and into the short corridor which leads into the kitchen. I backed out of the way and heaved myself up the pull-pole for I didn’t want her to see me. I could still hear her. Slide, pause. Slide, pause. Then she came into the full light of the kitchen and squinted.

I was glad to see a pinkness was mounting into her face. Her hair, black as the wing of a raven, stood out round her head in ringlets, stiffened by the drying solution in which we had floated. I have seen pictures of the old enchantress Medusa and she never looked so fierce or fateful as my sleepwalking Ariadne.

Ariadne did not look up. With arms advanced she felt her way down the passage to the dispensary and washing rooms. I knew that I would not see her again for several hours.

Though I know Ariadne as well as I know my own hands, I am still startled by her beauty. I recognize the fine hand of the genetic engineer who planned us to be a pair. I know that full-humans find her attractive. I have seen men at the spaceport on the moon pause in their stride when they see her. I have intercepted many a would-be lover at the moment of his advance. I have noticed that women also want to get close to her. It is as though beauty were a magnet that draws full-humans after it. Perhaps a technician who stared at her own wrinkled face or falling hair tried to design in Ariadne an ageless, beguiling face. What did they design for me?

She is tall, for a woman, and her shoulders are broad; a necessary adaptation to her job. She is built to carry me, should that ever be necessary. The eyes that stare into you are a startling green and her hair is a mass of curls, which tumble down over her shoulders. When she wakes in the morning, she brushes her hair while she sits naked in the bed beside me, and her hair falls into patterns. Sometimes, playfully she brushes my stark fur. She is supple too, in ways that I am not. She can sit cross-legged and with her back straight for hours. She can press her head between her knees. She can cross her legs behind her neck. When she does this she achieves a deformity which I find unpleasant but which makes her laugh. Imagine that, a beautiful woman naked and with her legs crossed behind her head, supporting herself on her hands and laughing. Am I not right when I say that Ariadne is beguiling?

She is also fearless. She is a woman to have at your side when trouble shows its face. More than once her speed of reaction has saved me when we have landed on some rogue world. And she has fought by my side in drinking places when we have been set upon by gangs of full-humans. There is no other woman I would have close to me whether in bed or battle. But what she thinks of me I hardly know. We have never discussed ourselves. What I am doing now, writing down my random thoughts, is the closest either of us has ever come to introspection. She accepts me. I am what is. I am the way things are meant to be. In all the ways that matter, she is totally faithful to me.

I observe that our brains differ in interesting ways. All part of the plan I suppose. Ariadne is more logical than I and can weigh up a situation in moments where I become stranded in contradiction. The price that she pays for her logic is that she is predictable. I am the one that improvises. I am the one that does the unexpected.

Today seems to be a day for questions. Here are some more. Given that Ariadne has beauty, brains and near-immortality, why is she not more happy? Given that I have a beautiful woman at my side, excitement in my work and abundant energy, why am I not contented? Perhaps the questions have different answers. Perhaps they have the same answer.

When I get the chance I must ask Ariadne if she dreams. I have never asked her that. I have never been curious until now.

I have moved out of the kitchen and up to the control deck of our ship. I want to be alone for a bit longer. Before I left I heard the shower start and that is a sure sign that Ariadne is waking up quickly … making up for lost time.

Here on the control deck I am surrounded by buzz and hum. I can hear the machines talking to one another, but what they are saying I do not know. Everything seems to be well. And if it were not …? Well, I doubt there is much I could do. The ship is its own world. Given luck it could rattle on to eternity. I sit in my swivel chair with its magnetic harness and tilt back until I can see the main view-screen which shows our destination. High and to the left of the screen is a dull red sun. I presume that our trajectory will intersect that sun and that the planet named La Plage is somewhere out there in the darkness. The name means nothing, unfortunately. The names were chosen at random. When Pioneer Murray was hurled into space, some eighteen generations ago, it was already decided that whatever world he happened upon, its name would be La Plage.

We are slowing quickly. Two g’s, I am told by one of the machines. We will be strong when we make landfall. But we have several weeks yet.

Apparently we encountered interstellar grit shortly after dropping into this space and received some damage. That has now been repaired but there is a polite request for me to do some more permanent repairs in the third sector hangar. A servopipe has been sheared and this has affected the hoist capacity of the crane. Well. Well. Every journey there is something, some small maintenance problem. I think such problems are built into the circuitry to give us something to do during the long days when we are fully awake and mobile and waiting for landfall.

The air in here smells awful. It is cycled up from below without passing through the normal filters. An economy, I presume. You see, when we are asleep, only the cabins, kitchen and long-sleep areas are supplied with air. The rest of the ship pumps to vacuum. The machines that run the ship prefer it that way. Air is corrosive.

I do not like the control cabin. I do not feel at ease here. The electronic jabber makes my teeth tickle after I have been here for a while. But I recognize that the style of genius that made these wise-idiot machines that protect us without cause or conscience, also created me and Ariadne.

Are we more machine than man?

That is a hideous question. It has the face of death. For if we are more machine than man, why give us life? Why give us consciousness?

What manner of creator would it be who gave us consciousness only so that we could be aware of our own futility?

I retreat from these thoughts and wonder what is happening to me. I long for Ariadne’s strong arms. I long to be there, nuzzling deep, strong in fang and fur, oblivious of the stars and their courses; just me, simple, a not-quite-but-almost human, alive. That is the main thing, ALIVE.

I have not told Ariadne what I am about.

I hid in the large cupboard which houses our silver survival suits, and held the door just a fraction ajar. I watched her when she came back from the shower and was glad to see that she was walking far more easily. She still held the guide rails but that was for balance only. Into her hair she had twisted one of the long-spined fan shells which we gathered when we were on High Jinks. I was pleased to see that she was already taking care with her appearance. That again is a good sign of a healthy awakening.

She paused in the kitchen and looked at the open container of juice I had left on the table. I could see her logical brain fighting to comprehend what she saw. The can should not have been there. It certainly was not there when we entered the long sleep. How had it got there? Had she opened it while dozing? Has Angelo already …

She turned, partly bracing herself on her arms, and set off to our long-sleep chamber.

When she had gone I crept out of the cupboard and sat down at the table as though nothing had happened. I took the can of juice in my hand. I heard her mutter something when she found my sleeping tank completely unfolded and then I heard her begin to come back.

She paused at the entrance and stared at me blankly and then her face broke into a smile which seemed to make the cabin brighter. “Angelo, you rogue. You beat me this time. Am I very late?”

“No. Three days.” I hope my smile warmed her. I stood up and crossed to her, put my arm round her and lifted her and carried her to the central table where I sat her in her chair.

“Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head and the curls began to work loose from the prongs of the fan shell. I selected another can of juice for myself and settled down at the table opposite her.

“Three days.”

I nodded.

“Have you enjoyed your peace? I always like the quiet time. What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah.”

I watched her drift away into a doze. Her pupils contracted and she stared through me, through the ship, through space and time into the world of dreams and memories.

She slept for seven hours, her arms resting along the table, and awoke with a great yawn. She stretched with her arms stiff above her head and her breasts lifted and the nipples rose. Her eyes were clear and sharp and she stood with amazing speed and flexed her fingers. She was coming awake quicker than I and had almost caught me up.

“I think I’ll try a juice. Get the bladder working. Then some real exercise. Have you eaten yet?”

I passed her a can of juice. “Not yet.”

“Three days and not yet eaten! You are as lazy as a whale. You woke up too soon. Have you checked your auto-nurse? Remember to check before we set off back. I’ll check it for you.” She finished her juice with a slurping sound and then tossed the plastic container into the disposal unit which chewed it and then spat the fragments out into space. “Come on, sleepy-head. Let’s swim. That’ll bring you round.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Ah. Well, a swim will do you the world of good. Come on.”

Our ship has a small centrifugal swimming pool. True. I know these things are considered a great luxury but to us they are part of our necessary equipment. Swimming is one of the gentlest and surest ways of coming awake after the long sleep. It is massage and the water is like a womb … or so I am told. Sometimes we sleep in the water, lolling like dead frogs, with our arms spread. Ariadne is especially beautiful to me then. The salts in the water bring a glow to her skin and the slap of the waves make her electric against me. Sometimes she holds my tawny arm, nuzzling and biting by turns. It is all part of waking up.

We swam, throwing a ball back and forth between us and diving down to retrieve weights from the bottom. I slapped the water with my arms and made a tent of spray over Ariadne and she dived at me, butting with her arms and sinking me like a torpedoed leviathan.

After about half an hour she needed to doze again and I was not surprised. I thought she had come awake too quickly. I left her there, draped in a net, with her dark hair waving round her head.

When she awoke she was sad. That again is normal. After every long sleep there is a period of depression while our emotions sort themselves out. A technician on Earth once explained it to me thus. When we begin a long sleep we enter an ideal world where everything is directed to contentment and satisfaction. Our bodies and minds are purified in sleep. When we awake after a long sleep we re-enter the impure world and that is a shock. Colours are less vivid. Actions are less meaningful. Thoughts are more muddled. And all of this leads to depression. Then the mind sorts itself out, decides to accept the nearest and most pressing reality, and we adjust. We make the best of what we have. For myself, I am glad that I cannot remember most of my dreams. I think they would make life intolerable. The only dream I can remember is the waking dream on the mountain … and that is different. That is trying to explain something.

Ariadne came to me directly from the pool. She was still wet as she lay down beside me in our cabin. Following an instinct that I suspect is as old as life itself, warmth found warmth, rhythm matched rhythm and we slipped into an easy lovemaking which rolled depression into a ball and tossed it into a corner like old clothes.

And when we awoke we felt happier.

*

We have spent our first full day together sitting in one of the view-bubbles which is the next best thing to sitting in space itself. We are surrounded by blazing stars except where the dark bulk of our ship blocks them out. The ship glimmers along its lines and planes where it reflects the starshine.

We have sat without talking, touching intimately, for space is a frightening and menacing companion when viewed in its vastness. And we are so small.

Ariadne has caught up with me as regards waking up and we are both eating. (I am already suffering bowel cramps.)

In our silence as we face the stars we doze lightly and the real world and the world of our minds flow together into a new amalgam. We see memories of our earlier life … especially painful ones … for those are the ones that need to be faced if we are to cope with the great darkness of our waking.

Soon our work will begin in earnest. Soon, too soon, the laze of our awakening will end and we will become what we are meant to be, an effective double unit, able to kill, able to cope with horrors, amoral as a knife.

Our destination lies before us already looming large. The ship’s sensors are out, grappling to find La Plage. Somewhere out there is the planet: big, small, gassy or hard. We do not know. And on that planet resides a speck of life, a Pioneer, sent out generations earlier, and we will bring it back, no matter how.

We are two weeks out from the long sleep now, and fully awake. I have read through my early pages and in the light of full reason find them amusing. When I began to write down my thoughts I hoped that I would be able to write something every day. But that has not been possible. Some days I have had no thoughts. Some days I have had thoughts but no words, or the words have cancelled one another out. I have told Ariadne what I am doing but have not asked her to read my pages. I must add that she has not asked to read them either. When I told her she laughed. She says that she has never seen a homunculus write before … and that is probably true. But I am learned, and the writing gives me pleasure, and so far has done me no harm that I can see. I suspect though that my two and two will not always add up to Ariadne’s four.

Sometime I will talk to her about the full-humans. I would like to know what she thinks. But for the moment we are approaching action stations. La Plage is before us.

It turns beneath us like a pearl. It is a ball of ice. I wonder what Pioneer Murray thought as he gazed down at it eighteen generations ago.

I imagine his heart sank … though he was programmed to take delight in adversity. Perhaps as his ship lowered he thought about the greatness of Earth for which he was a standard-bearer. I prefer that thought. I do not like the idea of a man landing in despondency so far from home.

We do not know what we will find though we know that he is still alive. His beacon which circles this world every two hours is putting out a strong life signal … and that signal, many light years hence, will find its way to Earth. But eighteen generations is a long time. Given his ability for rapid evolution he could by now have turned into anything. We might even find a sentient ice cube. I am being humorous.

Each hour we drop lower. The white face of La Plage fills . . .