Analog SFF, March 2012 (18 page)

Poe didn't appear surprised. “Marlon, this is my wife, Krystal. She flew in last night, after it became clear I'd be staying here longer than I originally thought.” He introduced me as a government security specialist.

At first glance she was plain, even a little boring—dark hair down to her shoulders and a pleasant face, though I wouldn't describe it as beautiful. But she had a quiet confidence in her upright posture and serene expression that was incredibly attractive. I'd met plenty of shrinking violets and insufferable shrews, but few women struck such a happy medium between the two extremes. Sara, my significant other, was more of a shrinking violet, but with a temper that pushed her toward the opposite end of the spectrum every once in a while. It was a medium—a central position, on average—but the standard deviation was large. Now I knew what Poe loved about his wife.

She stepped toward the desk and put her hand in Poe's. They seemed to be a happy couple, even as the furrows broke out on Poe's forehead when he said, “Souls?"

Krystal smiled as she replied. They spoke about angels and spirits, but I wasn't listening; I was too engulfed in envy.

Maybe happiness meant knowing who you were. Maybe you couldn't accept yourself as you were unless you knew who that person was.

I remembered who I was—who I was born as, anyway, even though I hadn't been that person in a long time. Rex Kimball. He had a troubled childhood, which was why he didn't mind losing contact with his family after joining security, and working his way up through the ranks. His parents divorced when he was three; his memories of his father were vague and fragmented. His stepfather proved to be a nice man, but he divorced his mother when Rex was 12. Rex went to live with him instead of staying with his mother, who entered rehab and never really came out. His stepfather, who became his guardian and often talked about adopting him, soon began a relationship with another woman who already had three kids, and didn't relish the thought of taking a share in any more. Rex wasn't biologically related to anyone in his “family,” and more often than not he found himself the odd fellow out.

I didn't spend much time thinking about Rex Kimball.

Poe and Krystal knew themselves, knew each other, and were comfortable with their situation despite their differences, their quirks and idiosyncrasies.

They were both looking at me, as if waiting for me to say something, when my comm beeped its relentless beep. I excused myself and walked into the private consultation room.

The escaped male hibernator had been found. But he wouldn't tell us much. He was dead.

It took a few hours to wrest the body away from the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. I arrived via the supersonic just as a security agent started to lose his temper and threaten someone. After I smoothed things out and found the right forms to sign and the right bureaucrat to befriend, we had our body with a minimum of fuss and publicity. The boss wanted to leave the body in Chicago and use local specialists or bring the needed specialists to the city; I argued it made more sense to move the body to South Dakota, where we already had a team in place. After a brief conference of higher-ups my argument prevailed, even though they didn't invite me to participate. We took the body back on the supersonic.

This time there was no mistake—the man was thoroughly deceased. Although unmarked and without exterior signs of violence or trauma, heartbeat and respiration were definitely absent. If we hadn't been looking for him, he would have been just another body, discarded without a fuss.

What did he die of? The thought occurred to me that the cause of death might have been the departure of consciousness. Or, in the terminology of old, he gave up the ghost.

Physicians had other ideas. The toxicology report came back that night. “This guy swallowed a drug store,” a pathologist told me.

"What did he take?” I asked.

"What didn't he?"

Further tests showed that the male hibernator had actually been selective in his drug usage. He'd taken a large number of different drugs, but their specific effects in each case were similar—all worked in some way or another on the brain. Directly or indirectly, these drugs influenced the rhythms of neural networks that governed a large proportion of the brain's functions.

"Despite all those neuroactive drugs he ingested,” said one of the physicians, “I doubt he died a happy man. That soup of chemicals bathing his brain would have had a hodgepodge of consequences. His thoughts and emotions must have been chaotic. Whatever this poor fellow was looking for, he didn't find it."

I wasn't so sure.

Poe and his wife invited me to a late dinner at a restaurant none of us had visited before. The Weffles apparently made it a habit to sample a variety of restaurants wherever they go. This one had a distinct western theme and flavor, with spittoons, and faux sawdust on the floor, and antelope heads mounted on the wall. Aroma generators provided a noticeable but not overpowering barnyard smell along with a trace of cigar smoke. I would have expected Krystal Weffle to be uncomfortable in these surroundings, but if she was, she didn't show it. We sat in a booth with a horseshoe-shaped bench, Poe and I at opposite ends and Krystal in the middle.

While we enjoyed a “slice o’ beef,” I discussed the pathology report with Poe. I made sure he'd gotten a list of drugs that had been in the hibernator's system at the time of death.

"Can you make any sense out of it?” I asked.

Poe took his time replying. After carefully chewing and swallowing a considerable bite of steak, he leaned back. “I'm not sure. It might fit . . ."

"Fit into what? The cognitive energy hypothesis?"

"Yes."

"How did the aliens first get started? It seems kind of like the old chicken-and-egg problem to me. You see my point? If they flit from body to body, then they need one handy whenever they decide to land, or find a home, or whatever you want to call it. Parasites always need a host. Let's say they learned how to do this on their home planet, wherever it was. I don't think it was earth. And yet they seem to be able to travel, or radiate, or whatever you want to call it. If they go from planet to planet, how does the first visitor to a new planet find the right kind of body? That cavern in the Badlands was nicely hidden and completely equipped for the visitors. Somebody had already been here."

Poe's wife smiled at him. “It seems you've found a convert. Marlon believes your theory."

"I think,” said Poe, looking at me, “the idea of flying from body to body seems to fascinate Marlon. Perhaps because the concept sounds so familiar to him."

I hadn't told Poe much about me, but he apparently guessed the trials and tribulations of a security agent—and my crazy way of life. He must have shared his thoughts with Krystal, for she nodded in agreement.

Perhaps Poe was right. I hadn't thought about it in that way before, but maybe I'd begun to identify with these beings. Which might be a dangerous thing to do. It certainly wasn't appropriate behavior for a security man. Another nail in the coffin of my career.

But I couldn't help it.

"Well?” I asked. “Are you going to psychoanalyze me all night or are you going to start thinking about the problem?"

"You might be getting a little too far ahead. In my opinion, we should focus on one or another aspect of this hypothesis. It seems to me that if we figure out what these hypothetical creatures are trying to accomplish, we would understand a lot more about them than we do now. And perhaps this knowledge will lead to the answers to other questions, such as the excellent one you just posed."

"Do you think the creature survived? Did it escape before the body died?"

"It depends."

"On what?"

Poe pushed his empty plate away and leaned against the hardwood back of the bench. “On whether it was successful, I suppose."

"Any speculations on what it was trying to do?"

"I told you the patterns in the chart are terribly complicated. I'm not sure what to make of them."

"Maybe they're too complicated for a human brain, even a modified one. Parasites not only need a host, they need the right kind of host. Could it have been taking drugs in an attempt to shoehorn itself fully into a relatively simple neural network?"

Poe's eyes seemed to gleam as he stared at me. “An interesting idea . . ."

I spent most of the rest of the night at the mobile command post. Frantically I searched for signs of the female hibernator, hoping that I'd find her before it was too late.

My eyes filled with images, my ears full of eavesdropped conversations. Thousands of faces and voices kept coming, pounding at me like waves on the beach. I concentrated my attention on the places where she might be able to obtain drugs: pharmacies, clinics, manufacturers, clandestine labs, research centers, gangland dealers.

Every once in a while I rested my eyes and ears.

What was the nature of those creatures? How did they reproduce, eat, excrete? Or were they so different that none of those things applied?

I wondered how they could have evolved. What made them leave their original bodies, assuming they ever had one?

Before I'd said goodnight to Poe I had plied him with questions. Although he continued to be reluctant to speculate, I drew him out a little, egged on by his wife. Poe said he would guess that our “hypothetical” radiation beings traveled at the speed of light. How remarkable to zoom around at 186,000 miles a second. I asked Poe what it would be like.

"Well beyond our comprehension,” he said.

"They'd be like angels,” said his wife. “Coming from heaven in an instant."

They looked at each other playfully.

"Time would have no meaning when you're traveling at the speed of light,” Poe said.

"As eternal as God,” said Krystal.

"An invasion from space,” I suggested, adding my own idiosyncratic interpretation. “Albeit possibly a friendly one. Or perhaps I should say neutral—neither helpful nor harmful."

This prompted Poe to begin talking about radiation coherence and spread. Coherent light, like laser beams, doesn't spread very much, but there is some dispersal. These beings may have limits beyond which they can't travel without “coming apart."

I kept thinking about what Poe and his wife had said as I sat in the stuffy, windowless command post, searching for the woman. I searched for her relentlessly, even though the boss was no longer cracking the whip.

The government had had enough time by now to do one of their big confabs. Wouldn't you have liked to listen in on that conference call? But the results apparently quenched some of their interest in the hibernators. The boss was no longer calling me every few hours. Beginning shortly after the male hibernator had been found dead, the government's motivation had waned—the threat level had subsided. Perhaps they'd even pull me off the assignment soon.

At 7:15 in the morning I finally found her, lying in an alley. I alerted the St. Louis emergency responders at once, hoping I wasn't too late.

The supersonic took off thirty minutes later. The female hibernator had been taken to a St. Louis hospital; she still clung to life, though the diagnosis was grim. The doctors refused to move her to South Dakota. I could have overridden this decision, but I elected not to do so. Instead I took Poe and his wife with me in the jet.

On the way Poe talked about the data he hoped to obtain.

"I've been thinking about what you said last night,” he told me. “Let's assume our theory is right. You mentioned the possibility that the hibernators were seeking drugs to help adapt themselves to their bodies. Although that's a good suggestion, I have a couple of objections to it. For one thing, the hibernators were apparently healthy when they woke up—the guard and orderly seemed to think so, anyway. And secondly, the bodies that had been stashed in the cave were modified, and if we assume someone had done a good job, then everything should have been fine. Whatever adjustments needed to be made could have been, and should have been, performed long before the temporary resident arrived."

"Maybe they had to struggle to stay inside."

"Possibly. But I have another idea. Remember that I found some complex nested patterns in the waveforms recorded in the voltage charts of the cocoons. I really, really want to see the EEG pattern of this female hibernator."

"Since she's unconscious,” said Krystal, “wouldn't it be some kind of slow wave?"

"Perhaps. But what I'd be most interested in seeing is the transfer—if any takes place."

"Like the voltage chart recording?"

"That was a crude recording. This time we'll have more sensitive instruments. I'd very much like to see what it looks like.” Poe looked at me and flashed a smile. “Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em; and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. Augustus De Morgan, who was inspired by Jonathan Swift, I believe."

Poe said nothing more, but I got the drift.

When we arrived at the hospital, I wasn't surprised to find Clarissa already there. She stood outside the room where the hospital staff had isolated the female hibernator. The hibernator's condition had not changed. Several uniformed guards positioned themselves on either side of the door. They didn't flinch when I walked up. Instead, their gaze drifted to Clarissa.

So now I knew who was in charge. Not me, but Clarissa.

Poe fidgeted behind me, anxious to get inside and talk to the attending physicians.

"Can we go in?” I asked Clarissa.

Clarissa pondered the question for a moment. Then she gave a nod to the guards, who stepped back.

"But I'd like to talk to you,” she said, beckoning me down the hall.

Since patience didn't seem to be one of her virtues, I told Poe to go into the room without me. I followed Clarissa into a private office that appeared to belong to one of the hospital directors. A picture of a happy family adorned a gigantic mahogany desk. Old medical gadgets dotted the wall shelves. Clarissa sat down in the plush chair behind the desk and gestured for me to take one of the other chairs.