Second generation, p.19
Second Generation, page 19
Demetria was starting to see a different side to her father. Rather than feeling sorry for him or frustrated at his self-destructive tendencies, she felt a little pride.
Subterranean bunker off Aleutian Peninsula, Earth – Demetria Philippou
“Oh! Hello,” Demetria was fighting the urge to run. Forcing herself to be natural and friendly. She had the advantage that she’d been warned about Homo Amphibius and yet she still baulked. Now she understood why Ursula had been so freaked out. Their skin, their stance, their lack of hair, their huge chests. But most of all it was their eyes. All of which were on her. She was the newcomer. She had to win their trust if she was to do what Leo asked, which was seek their consent for a health check.
“Say hello to Demetria,” encouraged Doctor Rossier, like a mother to small children. At least Demetria had Rossier’s consent. In fact, she’d been strangely enthusiastic that a trained medic and a biologist had asked to check over the young family standing uncertainly in front of her. As if she wanted to show off the health of her wards. Her… creations.
“Hello, Demetria,” whispered Timaeus. He seemed a little more relaxed than the others. Less wary. He offered his hand. She was expecting the webs between the fingers, but it still took all her self-control not to flinch. Just as Leo had said, Timaeus’s hand felt smooth and silky. It was difficult to see colours in the dim blue light, but she suspected it must be a dark brown. Totally hairless.
“Demetria is medically trained,” explained Doctor Rossier. “And Georgia is a biologist. They would like your permission to give you an examination. To check you’re all healthy.” She nodded encouragingly, as if prompting them to agree.
Timaeus smiled politely, holding the doctor’s eye a moment then took his partner, Hedistē aside. They communicated, but not in recognisable speech. It seemed they had developed a kind of sign language, punctuated by clicks and glottal sounds made without opening their mouths. Of course, they needed to communicate underwater, and speech would be worse than useless for that. Demetria watched them, and the doctor out the corner of her eye. Leonie Rossier didn’t seem any the wiser than her about what they were saying.
Timaeus turned back to Demetria. “I am sorry, I understand it may have been rude of me to talk like that,” he flicked a nervous look at the doctor then gave Demetria a charming smile. “We would be happy for you to check our health. Mine, Hedistē’s and our children. But you should ask Plato and Aristion’s permission. We cannot speak for them.”
Demetria noticed a frown pass over the doctor’s face before evaporating like morning mist. “Of course,” she said, sounding as if she were struggling to catch her breath, “We’ll ask them when they return to the pool. In the meantime, I shall leave you and Georgia to examine Timaeus and his family. You won’t want me standing over your shoulder.”
You won’t need to, thought Demetria, watching the doctor leave. You have cameras everywhere.
She felt nervous. Glad Georgia was with her. Glad Phoebe and Chen were in the next chamber talking to the AI, Noah. Katya had finally been persuaded to go to the village to meet Alyona’s people, with Feng and Samaira. Ursula had stayed with Leo at the shuttle. She wanted to use the systems on board to run a search for remote tracking devices as she was paranoid that Noah was everywhere, watching everyone.
Leo had his report to make. Demetria wondered how Stef and those at home would react.
“Come on then,” said Georgia, eager to get started. “Who would like to be first?”
“Allow me,” offered Timaeus with a smile.
Timaeus proved a willing patient. The rest of his family took gentle coaxing, but Demetria found a little humour and distraction went a long way to relax them. Although their eyes seemed most alien to her, they turned out to be little altered from her own. The pupils were fully dilated to allow the maximum light in, all but hiding the whites of their eyes. There was less evidence of cone cells on the back of the eye, for colour sensitivity, and more of the rods for low light contrast. His chest and diaphragm seemed very different. The ribs lengthened and pushed apart to allow space for the huge lungs within. They seemed to displace other organs around them, to squeeze every last breath of air in. When she asked him to breath out she coughed and recoiled. His breath stank of fish. What did she expect?
His vocal chords seemed thinner and shorter than normal. Perhaps explaining why they spoke in hushed whispers. Was this deliberate gene manipulation or lack of growth through less use? It was a question she and Georgia would return to on many other issues, again and again.
The webs between his fingers and toes looked alarming but were simple extensions of the skin already present on any human being. It was the skin itself that was changed. The pores less porous. The fatty tissue that insulated their bodies seemed slightly thicker. Hair almost wholly absent, and an oily sheen that appeared to protect them against the cold while allowing them to slip through the water.
Their limbs were powerful. Heavily muscled because they swam much of their waking hours. Their legs were all longer than average, perhaps because they relied on them so heavily for propulsion. Perhaps because they had been designed like that, by Rossier.
When Demetria and Georgia paused in their peering, poking and scanning, Timaeus said playfully, “Why are you examining us here? Why not swim with us?”
Demetria exchanged looks with her mother, “We don’t have any… swimwear.”
“Neither do we,” shrugged Timaeus, unselfconsciously.
“Fair point,” conceded Demetria. After a slight initial embarrassment of seeing the whole family naked, she had gone into professional mode. She wondered whether she would be breaking any professional boundaries but equally she found it unfair to expect them to do everything on her terms. “We can’t see you swim unless we join you and I guess that’s the whole point of who you are.”
Georgia nodded, though she could see the same hesitation in her eyes. They started by removing their exoskeletons and immediately felt the full force of the Earth’s pull. They removed their outer clothes but kept their underwear on for modesty. They’d just have to be wet and uncomfortable on the way back to the shuttle.
Slipping into the pool was both a jolt from the relatively cold water and a relief. It took their weight. Just as Earth tried to press them down, so the sea buoyed them back up.
“It is deep,” whispered Timaeus. “Do not try to rise to the surface, it is too far, you will suffer from…”
“Decompression,” said Demetria. “The bends.”
“Yes, yes. Wave at me when you need to take a breath and we will guide you to air. There are trapped pockets in caves under the rock.”
They dipped their heads under the water. It was hard to see anything, and Demetria came back up quickly. It suddenly seemed claustrophobic and dangerous.
“We will help you,” offered Timaeus, taking her hand. Hedistē took Georgia’s.
Demetria felt a firm yet sensitive grip as she was led underwater. She fought the urge to panic, closing her eyes, letting Timaeus pull her through the water. When she opened them again she saw a dim light from above and deep indigo gloom below. A shoal of silvered fish loomed then parted around her. She saw Georgia being pulled expertly by Hedistē at her side. Hedistē’s legs undulated together, much like a fish would move, making powerful yet seemingly effortless strokes that propelled them through the water.
Demetria started to feel giddy. She was running out of air. She waved at Timaeus who nodded and swerved to his right, towards the rocky underwater edge of the island. She was beginning to panic that she had left it too late or, worse, Timaeus had tricked them and intended to drown them. He pulled her into the dark recesses between the rocks and she felt her head break the surface of the water. She gasped and spluttered. She heard others enter the same echoing space and another, presumably her mum, coughing out water and gasping for air.
“Goodness, I had forgotten,” whispered Timaeus into the darkness. “How quickly your kind tire.”
Demetria took another gulp of air, “We are in your hands.”
“Do you trust us?”
“Do we have a choice?” asked Georgia.
“I trust you,” said Demetria, lowering her voice to the same whisper as her guide.
“Good. Perhaps I can trust you too.” He said this in a tone Demetria found almost conspiratorial, though perhaps anything sounded so in whispers. “Perhaps I can show you something? Something you should see, but not talk of while you are anywhere within the bunker.”
“Is it safe?” asked Georgia.
“Yes. For you it is perfectly safe.”
Whatever did he mean by that? Only one way to find out, thought Demetria. “Yes, please show us.”
Timaeus and Hedistē took them down, under water again. They rounded an underwater headland, just visible as a dark silhouette against the dim light above. Demetria thought she saw a flash of red. Timaeus led them on, parting some fronds of weed so she could now see clearly. A vast cylindrical vessel rested on its end among the rocks like a semi-shrouded silo. A dim glow of red light came from a row of portholes along its side. A red light flashed from its top at regular intervals like a warning light. As her eyes were adjusting, she could make out letters stencilled above the portholes: ‘Ark One. Depository.’ Pressing her forehead to a porthole she could see the cylinder was lined with drawers, much like the ones in Rossier’s lab.
She would have stayed longer but she was fast running out of air again. She waved to Timaeus who pulled her swiftly into another crevice in the rocks. They emerged again in total darkness where she and Georgia gulped life saving air into their lungs.
“What was that?” she managed.
“We don’t know,” said Timaeus. “Leonine occasionally asks us to take containers from a doorway at its side, but she does not explain what is in them or what she will do with them. Recently, for several months, it made strange vibrations in the water. We could feel them far, far away from here, while in the water. The vibrations stopped two months ago. Then you arrived. We were hoping you could tell us why.”
16
The Dark Parade
Regeneration 9 – Mars
The larvae push their way through the thick ice floor and pull their hardening shells tight around them, shutting out the cold. The temperature rises, just a little. The pale sun has warmed the air around the ice chamber, just a little. The shells split, sprouting quads of fine wings. The insects shiver then take flight.
Everywhere they fly they meet ice. Ice walls, ice floor, ice ceiling. But a few discover a shiny dark teal surface and, thinking it may soon release fronds of succulent sap green tendrils, they settle.
They wait.
No tendrils. No gorging.
It is starting to get colder again. They crawl deep inside the curved interior of the disappointing shiny object and pull their wings in, sealing themselves within their shells. Safe against the cold.
Until the next morning.
The Shuttle, Aleutian Peninsula, Earth – Leo Meier
“Homo what?” exclaimed Stef over the vid link to the Armstrong.
“That’s what Demetria said,” answered Leo. “Homo Amphibius. A new genus of humanity.”
“You say there are six of them?”
“That we know of.”
“That… you… know of. The way you’re talking tells me you don’t trust this Doctor Rossier.”
“We’ve only just sent a team back for a second visit. There’s much we don’t know yet so we plan to be there daily to learn as much as we can. Including the things they aren’t telling us.”
“Hm. What with survivors mutated by nuclear wastelands and amphibius humans it sounds like some dark parade of humanity down there.”
“Most Martians didn’t think people had survived on Earth. Damn it, many thought there’d be no life at all! Seems life is a lot more tenacious than we expected. Adaptable.”
“There’s a hell of a difference between life adapting through natural selection and it being adapted by deliberate manipulation.”
“Gene splicing.”
“Whatever. It’s a moral minefield and there’ll be uproar in Tithonium.”
“Surely our people should understand the pressures of surviving in a hostile environment?”
“Sounds like you’re defending Doctor Rossier.”
“I think we should be defending Timaeus and his people. I doubt they had a choice, but they deserve our respect now they exist.”
“Hm,” Stef leaned back in her chair, thinking. “Send me all the headcam recordings you have, and your commentary. I’ll review and forward them straight on to Mission Control. Can’t wait to see the reply from Trish and Sam.”
“Any more news from Hal’s team?”
“I forget you’re behind with all your excitement on Earth. Hal’s team have been analysing the cam recordings of your entry flight. They got very excited when they saw those radial lines in the ice over the Earth’s South Pole. You counted seven, but enlargements have revealed another four, with a gap where they reckon a twelfth one should be.”
“Twelve…” Leo’s brain was racing to catch up and recall what the Mars polar team had found.
“They found twelve radial ice tunnels, remember?”
“…Oh! Holy Shit!”
“Exactly. Looks more and more like it was an Earth team who made those tunnels on two planets.”
“Unless it was Martians.”
“Seriously? No one stole the Armstrong while I was looking.”
“No… I mean, indigenous Martians. Perhaps a long time ago.”
“Hal’s team aren’t ruling anything out, but they believe we’d have seen some other signs of intervention on Mars by now, if intelligent life had once existed there. Peter has a weird theory that the positioning of the tunnels and the chambers in them form an intentional pattern. A communication of sorts. Sounds wild to me.”
“Pass it on to us. And tell them the AI avatar casing is made using nano-tube tech. Similar to the stuff they think the egg-shaped casing is made from.”
“Wow, sounds like an even stronger case for recent Earth tech.”
“Could be. After what we found, the last couple of days, I’m not ruling anything out.”
“Before or after Goliath?”
“Before seems most likely. Then none of us were expecting to find a fully functioning gene-splicing lab with AI.”
“Fair point. I’ll…” Stef paused, looking anxiously over her shoulder.
“What’s up, Stef?”
“Pawel. He’s been even more challenging than usual these last couple of days.”
Leo frowned, “What do you mean?”
“I had to stop him ripping parts off the Armstrong to fix one of the shuttles. We had quite an argument. Haven’t been speaking since, not even had a meal together,” she looked over her shoulder again. Leo could hear some banging in the distance.
“Better go,” said Stef abruptly. “Send me those cam recordings.” And the link cut off.
Leo shook his head. There wasn’t much he could do down here on Earth, and Stef was a tough one. She’d put Pawel straight. Wouldn’t she?
“Hey Leo,” it was Ursula, emerging from her tech den at the back of the shuttle. “Come take a look at this.”
Leo shuffled along the aisle, trying to refocus on the here and now. He stepped into the den to see an array of vid screens and projections she had set up. Some showed the 3D maps he’d constructed. Others showed aerial views, stills from when they were coming in for their landing.
“See these dots,” Ursula pointed at a ring of them around an island off the coast of the peninsula. Leo nodded. “They’re giving off ongoing data recording signals.”
“Again in English?”
“Rossier has her island bugged.”
“She may feel threatened by the people in the treehouse village. She said they didn’t get off to a good start.”
“You saw the place, Leo. They live in a bunker. Metal doors. They don’t have to take any unwanted visitors. And you said the only ones the survivors in the village had seen were the fish-people.”
“Timaeus and his family are free to come and go,” said Leo, firmly emphasising his name. “They might be safe in the water, but they could be at risk on land. Rossier and Noah may be trying to protect them.”
“Look over here,” Ursula pointed to a line of dots along the coast near the island and a cluster of them inland. “They’re covering about ten kilometres of coastline, so I’m guessing they have plenty of warning when anyone approaches. And that cluster is on the treehouse village. Looks aggressive to me.”
“Surveillance is not the same thing as aggression.”
“Fuck it, Leo, Rossier and her AI are bugging the survivors in their own village. Unless Alyona and her bunch have tech we didn’t see. That looks damned aggressive to me.”
Leo nodded, “Hmm. I admit, it does.”
“Thank you,” Ursula breathed sarcastically. “Why are you so hell-bent on defending Rossier?”
“I’m not. I’m trying to be objective and understand what’s really going on. If there’s one thing Sam and Trish taught me it was not jump to conclusions. Look for more evidence.”
“Well, here it is! Won’t be long before they bug this shuttle.”
“I’ll ask Doctor Rossier about it.”
“You expect her to be straight?”
“Not necessarily. But you can tell almost as much from what people don’t say as what they do. Want to send me a screenshot of that?”
“Sure. Good luck with getting your confession,” Ursula shook her head and stood. “Hey, Georgia. I thought you’d be with the creepy gang for the rest of today?”
Leo turned to see Georgia at the doorway to the tech den, a serious look on her face. “What’s up?” he asked, immediately concerned. “Why aren’t you with the others?”
“Still on the island. I said I had a lot of data already and I wanted to come back here to sort through it. Not a lie, but I have a more important reason. Rossier and Noah have been hiding the true contents and location of Ark One.”
