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XIII: EAST OF EDEN

"You know," Eve said to John, "when we were living in that farm village I tried to imagine what it would be like to be truly a native there. Now we're going to be not much different from them. It's kind of ironic."

Robey shrugged. "I dunno. The view's spectacular, but I sure can't see why this is otherwise any different from where we were, that's for sure. All those people, all those legends, and it's just three big moons."

"Maybe. But it doesn't have Captain Sapenza and his band underground like the last one," she noted. "Heaven on top, Hell below."

"I'm not so sure," he said worriedly, looking at the view of the blue and white ball on the screen as they approached. "Seems like the more a place looks like Eden the more snakes it winds up having."

"That's why Saint Patrick is going down first," Karl Woodward told them, overhearing their conversation. "Cromwell's not a name the Irish ever liked, but Patrick was an Englishman no matter what they claim and our Cromwell is very good at dealing with snakes."

Cromwell wore his combat suit, complete with knightly Saint George crosses, but the rest of those he took with him were planetary scientists rather than combat personnel. He didn't expect serious trouble down there; he did need to be able to tell Olivet, and before it landed, that it was safe and proper to do so.

They centered in on a broad mid-latitude continent and specifically an area not far from the eastern seacoast where the other ship's lifeboat was still giving off homing signals. It was the logical landing site, but it was also why Cromwell was going down loaded for bear. No telling if these people were simply unlucky or waiting to pull a fast one.

Close up, Balshazzar looked even more like the old classical versions of Paradise than they'd imagined. Four main continents sitting on well developed continental plates with quite a number of islands of all sizes in the oceanic realm. In fact, only one ocean area seemed to have no land mass at all, and it was well south and towards the polar regions.

There was a lot of active weather; lightning was quite abundant, but not in quantities any more dangerous than the average colonial world, and there was some continental weather. There were, however, no ice caps, which explained why the islands were plentiful and the continents relatively small.

Temperatures in the mid latitudes seemed to vary little, north or south, averaging about thirty-two degrees Celsius. The equatorial zones were considerably hotter and probably would not be great for any long-term settlement; temperatures there easily reached forty-five or greater, particularly during the period when the planet was on the sunward side of the great giant, but dropped only about five degrees when facing the big planet, no more than ten during the short night.

It was a hot world. Even the poles reached fifteen to eighteen degrees.

That was an oddity they hadn't thought of with light. With the moon's rotation, they had a relatively normal day/night cycle even though, being fairly small, a full day was closer to nineteen hours than the human standard twenty-four. But when it was on the sunward side of the gas giant night was not very dark; even though you could follow the planetary shadow on the surface of the big planet, the thing was so huge and so dominating that it illuminated the dark side facing it to about fifty percent of daylight levels. This was a very bright world overall.

And plants seemed to have evolved on it just for that. Big plants, small plants, jungle plants, grasses, it didn't matter. Every square centimeter of land was covered with growth, all verdant and abundant. There didn't seem to be much sign of animal life, but they'd have to get down there to find out for sure.

It was certainly carbon-based life, too, which held out the possibility that, as alien as it should be, there might well be plants down there that human beings might eat and take nourishment from.

Cromwell homed in on the lifeboat beacon and brought one of the four scout ships Olivet had left down to the surface about a kilometer from the signal, in a storybook meadow complete with placid fresh-water lake.

They already knew that the oxygen-nitrogen mix was breathable, but they checked out all of the elements of the air before opening the hatches. Some slightly heavier than normal concentrations of inert gasses might well explain why the slightly elevated oxygen level didn't result in more intense fires, but the overall mix had nothing new or unusual, and nothing they hadn't seen before on other worlds.

"Too good," one of the environmental engineers commented. "Ten to one the place smells like rotten garbage."

"There is only one way to find that out," Cromwell noted, and gave the security code to open the hatch.

Stepping through the airlock felt like someone had soaked a wool blanket in water and thrown it on them. The air was incredibly humid, heavy, thick, and also all-around hot. Still, it didn't smell particularly bad.

"Kind of smells like cinnamon," one of the techs commented. "And several other spices, too."

"More like incense," said another. "Several flavors mixed together. A little sweet for me, but not really bad, I don't think. Beats rotten garbage, anyway."

"Frankincense," Cromwell muttered.

"Sir?"

"The Three Kings, also known as the Three Maji or the Three Wise Men who brought gifts to the baby Jesus. You know that. The gifts were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The first is self-explanatory. The other two are exotic spices used in ancient times in perfumes and incense. In those days they were all incredibly valuable. What we're smelling here is close to frankincense. That worries me."

"Sir?"

"I do not believe that the atmosphere of this world smells uniformly like frankincense. So why does it smell of it just here, where we land?"

They stood there for a few moments, saying nothing, although a couple of the techs were checking samples.

"Curious," Cromwell noted, not really talking to them.

"Sir?" one of the techs responded.

"Listen. Just everyone stop what they're doing and listen."

There was the sound of wind blowing through the tops of trees, the sound of small ripples from the lake hitting the shore, and the sound of a gurgling brook coming from the lake and heading off towards the sea many kilometers away, but not much else that they could hear, and one of the engineers said so.

"That's exactly the point," the security chief replied. "There's no real sounds at all. No birds, no insects, no animal sounds. Just wind and water. Life sensors?"

"Nothing really, sir. Just plant matter. If the plants here cross pollinate, they sure don't do it in the usual manner."

"Microorganisms?"

"Those we got," the engineer responded. "I'd say there's enough new species here to keep an exobiologist happy for three lifetimes just in this pond scum. Nothing extraordinary, though. They don't look like ones in our databases, but why should they? They do look like normal evolutionary variants. I expect we're going to find them everywhere, and everywhere a new set of species."

It was impossible at the moment to know if any were harmful to humans, but it was not only unlikely—only a few dozen organisms had ever crossed the interstellar species barriers—it was also moot. They would have to face them or similar groupings no matter where they settled. It wasn't like they had a wide range of choices.

"Now, here's something interesting," one of the techs commented, examining a fruit picked off a low tree. "Very bananalike, would you say?"

Everyone looked. "Yes? So? It's a common form," another tech said dismissively.

"Yeah, well, it's not a bananalike fruit at all. In fact, the analysis here says that the only thing it can possibly be is a real, live banana, ancient Brazilian strain, no significant genetic differences nor abnormalities."

"What! That's impossible!" Cromwell roared. "Are you certain?"

"Yes, sir. Just like those are common coconut palms imported and raised on countless planets—I'd need to run the genetics to tell you which variety—and I'll bet most anything that those are mangoes, those are papayas, and so on." She stopped and shook her head, looking incredibly puzzled. "If we find a grove with a bunch of apple trees off by themselves, I'm out of there," she added, muttering.

Cromwell was suspicious. "If there are no noticeable insects here, how are they pollinated? Who brought them? They seem to be growing wild, but there's not a lot exotic here. They don't look like they aggressively displaced anything."

"Sir, there were large areas of the planet having no correlatable growths to anything we know," the other tech noted. "In fact, this region here showed to be far smaller and more mixed from above, but it has definite boundaries. Kind of like a self-maintaining greenhouse for somebody's exotic fruit and vegetable collection."

Cromwell looked around suspiciously. "I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, considering the legends about this area. Who knows who or what is here, or has been here before, or in fact was trapped just like we are? Keep at it, people. I'm going to take a look at that crashed lifeboat."

The lifeboat was about a kilometer or so from them, but fairly easy to locate using the orbital positioning system relayed down to his suit. As he walked, slowly, carefully, deliberately, but without any sense of real danger to himself, he heard an odd sound. At first it seemed like the rustling of wind in the higher trees, but there was no wind to speak of here and now, and the more he listened the more it sounded close, on the ground, not up in the forest heights.

It was kind of like, well, sand, or very smooth pebbles, rippling along on glass. That was the best way he could think of it. It certainly didn't seem to be closing on him, but it did appear to be following, perhaps watching. It was possible that the local botanist was indeed in residence.

A true highly advanced alien intellect would in and of itself be something of a breakthrough here. The few sentient creatures discovered in humanity's expansion had been quite primitive, really. This one, if it indeed was living and not some sort of computer on automatic, would be something else entirely. Something that could grab plant DNA and duplicate, raise, and vary it without compromising it. That would be quite impressive.

The lifeboat sat inert on a meadow floor, looking a bit banged up but hardly crashed. It was a fairly standard unit, which could hold as many as four people in a pinch, and if its cryo units were operable could sustain those four almost indefinitely. Little wonder they chose to land here instead of being frozen, though; this place was almost a golden Christmas tree amongst the terror and gloom of interstellar isolation.

The airlock hatch had been left open; whoever had come down in it had crossed his or her Rubicon when landing here and there was no particular purpose to sealing it off once they'd committed and landed. He looked around for signs of where the inhabitants might have gone, but saw no traces.

"Archangel, any human life signs that aren't our people?" he called up to the mother ship.

"Affirmative, but it is very difficult to keep them on scope and tracked. There's an energy field down there that is just unbelievable. Got a fairly good lock on you, though."

"How many unknowns?"

"We count two. One about a hundred meters northwest of your position, the other less than half that and to the east of you. They fade in and out, almost like ghost images. There is also an indistinct anomalous blob at your back, perhaps thirty meters. We have no correlation for what it is, but it does seem to be able to move."

Cromwell turned and looked back in that direction but saw nothing. He didn't expect to. Still, that meant that the unknown crackling sound had corporeal form.

"Entering the lifeboat," he told them.

The inside wasn't much, and he spent little time with it. There was probably a log someplace, though, and he tried all the switches and controls to see if he could locate information that would tell him who and what this one had come from. The ship, however, was dead, no power at all. It was as if all the energy cells had been totally depleted, something not normally found outside a service dock. Still, all this thing was now was a lump of metal and synthetics. With no power, the energy-to-matter converter wouldn't produce food and water, nor much else that was needed. Whoever had come down in this thing was at the mercy of the planet, which was probably why they were out scouting around. Odd, though, that they hadn't headed for the Olivet scout when it landed. This close, they had to have seen it come in, or at least heard it.

He emerged from the lifeboat, puzzled but confident that the answers weren't too far away nor terribly exotic. The familiar fruits and such here could easily have been drawn from computer files or an older landing where they might have had samples that could have been copied. These two might well think that they'd be targets of the Olivet crew, since people tended to think that anybody on the other side thought and did just what they thought and did, or they might just be terrified of being trapped for life on a world with hundreds and hundreds of Bible thumpers. Serve 'em right, he thought.

If it wasn't for that clicking, rustling blob he might not be that concerned about this place at all.

"Is the anomalous life sign still in the same position?" he asked Archangel.

"Affirmative, sir. It came in a bit while you were inside, but backed off to its old spot rather quickly. We should have been able to see it, but all we got was a kind of glassy, reflective distortion. We don't know what it is, but it is masked in a way that we can't compensate for. What do you think it is?"

"I think it's the manager," he replied, looking out at where it should be but was not. Was there a kind of shimmering distortion there?

"Hello!" he called out, palms out. "Will you speak with me, or communicate with me in some fashion? I mean no harm to anyone or anything that means no harm to me."

There was that rustling again, only not constant, more like marking a space but unable to keep completely still. This close it reminded him of old-fashioned marbles, only filling and contained in some kind of frame. That was the sound, anyway.

No, you're not going to show yourself, are you? he thought to himself. You want to wait until we're all down here and you have the advantage. He couldn't blame it. He would certainly have done the same thing.

Well, if there wasn't going to be any first contact today, then maybe the other two, who were undoubtedly human, would suffice.

"One of the human figures is doubling back your way," Archangel told him. "Watch your back."

"Oh, I think if he wanted to come up on my back and get the drop on me, we should let him," Cromwell responded. "Keep the techs away, though. Just me."

"Affirmative. You're sure?"

"Just keep an eye on me, that's all." He could feel the other person there now, feel the eyes on the back of his neck somehow. He'd always been able to do that.

"Would you prefer I kept my back to you or should I turn around?" he called aloud in a nonthreatening tone of voice.

"You can turn around, but no funny stuff," a man's voice responded, the smoothness of his voice masking the fear bordering on terror that Cromwell sensed in him.

The security chief turned and found himself looking at a young bearded man, somewhat Oriental in features but a big man, perhaps physically larger than Cromwell, and aiming a very nasty needler right at the security chief's head. The body armor was obvious, although there was little to indicate its capabilities, but Cromwell's head was exposed, at least apparently, to anyone who hadn't seen a suit in action.

"My name is Thomas Cromwell, son, security team chief of the starship Mountain, or what's left of it. I believe in self-defense, but I'm not in the business of harming anyone."

"You have the big ship up there?" the young man asked, sounding increasingly nervous.

"More or less. The interstellar one is shot, bad as yours. We have a fairly large secondary ship in orbit, but it's strictly interplanetary."

"You got to get us off of here," the young man said firmly, the pistol still aimed at Cromwell's head. "You got to get everybody off this world. I don't care what happens after that."

"Well, nobody invited you along. You chose to follow us," Cromwell replied. "Now we're all in the same boat. The difference is, wherever we are, we are home."

"You gotta get us off this place," the young man repeated, almost as if he were in shock.

"To where, son? Only three places in this system we can live on indefinitely. This one, one that's cold and barren, and one that's got far too much lava for my liking and probably stinks to high heaven. And that gun's no way to welcome the only possible friends and allies you got. What is the matter with you, son? You had the guts to follow us through a wild hole. What's got you so petrified now?"

The young man's eyes were wild. "You haven't seen it, felt it. This may look like Eden but it's Eden with the snake as boss. We ain't gonna be no slaves to no thing. It sucked our lifeboat engines dry, and it'll do the same to you sooner or later. It's just waiting for you to land the rest of your party and your big ship, that's all."

He nodded. "It came up to us just as we all cleared the hatch. We were just breathing our first fresh air and checking for wounds when it come right out of the woods there and straight for Captain Terashkova. She drew and fired, but it didn't make any difference. Point-blank range. It—it kinda just smothered her. And then that was it. Nadya and me, we just took to the woods. It moved in, drained all the power from the lifeboat, and it's been kinda loafing around, like it's waiting. Waiting for us, or you, or everybody!"

Cromwell doubted it. It sounded like the thing had simply defended itself, something he'd have done in similar circumstances. "What happened to your captain, boy? Where's the remains?"

The young man pointed briefly with the pistol. "Over there. See what it's done?"

Cromwell looked to the right of the open hatch. There was nothing there but a small bushy tree. "You don't mean that is your former captain?"

"Yeah, you got it. Thing turned her into a fuckin' bush. That's us, too, mister. That's everybody up above, too, if they come down here. Now, you turn and lead me back to your shuttle."

"Oh, we'll go back over there," Cromwell promised him. "However, what makes you think it'll let us go?"

"It smells all them people of yours up there. It's waiting. It's smart, it is."

"Come on, then. Let's get back to my ship and my people," Cromwell told him, trying to soothe him. He was less concerned with what the kid might do than he was with a panicky set of shots at whatever it was out there which might cause all sorts of problems. If it could drain the energy out of a lifeboat, then it was probable that the combat suit was no more use than a medieval suit of armor, if that.

"Why in God's name did you take the risk to follow us here, boy?" Cromwell asked, hoping to keep the boy talking. There was a companion someplace, too, probably as panicked and as well armed as the kid was.

"Riches. The Three Kings—jeez!—everybody knows about the Three Kings. A tiny number of soul gems alone would set us up for life."

"Yeah, well, your captain picked the wrong place, son," Cromwell told him. "No soul gems or weird alien artifacts or anything else on this one. And, all things considered, we could be hip deep in them for all it would matter. We're not going anywhere."

The crackling, rolling noise began off to their left. He could feel the kid stiffen, but, if anything, it only increased his resolve. "Keep going!"

"What's your name, son? Mine's Brother Thomas."

"I ain't your son and you ain't no brother of mine, neither!" the boy snapped. "The name's Alan Chu. I'm from Quen Cong."

Quen Cong was a world just barely outside the barrier of the Silence. Cromwell remembered it as hustling, bustling, energetic, but with a premium on the old ways and values.

"Yes, I am familiar with Quai Son City," he responded. "Kind of primitive, rugged, but great food."

The rustling had now gone in front of them, and seemed poised to cut them off just short of Cromwell's landing.

"Well, Mister Chu, I'd say whatever that is has a problem with guns and such. Did your captain fire at it? Or try to?"

"Of course! It attacked, didn't it?"

Didn't it? "I think if you put that gun down, or just in your belt, it won't attack. It might try and communicate, but it's not going to attack. But if you keep it out, if you make it ready to shoot, then we can both be dead men."

"Like hell I'm gonna put this thing away! You just keep going!"

"There are people," Cromwell muttered sadly, "who simply refuse to be saved."

"What's that?"

In one motion the combat suit snapped on full and Cromwell whirled, hit the man a knockout blow on the chin, and grabbed the pistol as the poor guy crumpled to the ground. The suit snapped off just as quickly, leaving a sad-faced Cromwell holding the gun.

He looked at the pistol for a moment, sighed, and then tossed it well into the woods. He then reached down to pick up the limp but still very much alive Mister Chu and take him along.

There was something there in front of him. He put Chu down once more and stared at it.

An energy field, that was for certain. Some kind of distortion behind which something could hide, but it wasn't clear what. It was pretty transparent, although it gave a major distortion of whatever was behind it, and it seemed to be just standing there.

"Hello," Cromwell said as pleasantly as possible. "And what can we do for you?"

The thing did not respond, moving only slightly back and forth and producing that loud snapping marble crackling sound. They sure didn't work by sneaking up on things, that was for sure. Not unless all on their world were deaf.

Cromwell tapped out a code on a small wristband and the combat suit peeled off and collapsed at his feet. He reached down, picked it up, and with two more presses of controls it was nothing more than a meter-cubed metallic object with a handle.

He let go of it, turned back to whatever it was, and spread his hands. "All right, I doubt if that was worth much anyway, so here I am. Now what do we do?"

The thing seemed to be just about to resolve itself into something intelligible as Cromwell and those above via his small body camera watched breathlessly when suddenly there was a bloodcurdling scream from the left and sharp beams went off all over the place. One of them struck Cromwell directly in the back between the shoulder blades and went right on through; others focused on the alien distortion.

"Thomas! No!" Woodward's shocked voice sounded in his ear. "Oh, my God! No!"

The alien suddenly lunged for the area from which the shots had been fired with a speed that was startling. Cromwell, in shock, feeling that he was dying, tried to shout, "No!" but it would not come. He dropped to his knees, unable to see the commotion behind him and to his left, and then keeled over onto the ground.

Within seconds the alien crackling presence was back, barely giving any attention to the slight moan of the young man, who was just now coming to, concentrating entirely on the fallen and still figure of Thomas Cromwell.

Something, some of the distortion, reached out and turned him over. His eyes were half open, there was blood at the corner of his mouth, and the wound was surgical but effective. There was no question either to the creature on the ground or to the monitors above that Thomas Cromwell was dead.

And then the distortion, flowing, rolling almost like a blanket, completely covered Cromwell's body. It remained there for a couple of minutes, masking out the dead man from the overhead surveillance camera, although you could see a human-sized rippling form beneath.

"What the devil is it doing?" Woodward muttered to himself, watching transfixed from on high, as were they all.

Chu, his senses mostly restored, also saw what seemed to be happening. He'd been knocked out when the action had taken place, and from his vantage point it appeared that the thing was attacking, perhaps eating, Thomas Cromwell. He tried very hard to slowly and deliberately move back and away from the scene and into the forest. He'd just about made it to cover when the thing rolled off of Cromwell's body.

For a moment, it appeared that nothing had happened, and the observers all thought that the thing must have simply made a thorough examination. Maybe death didn't come that way, or that easily, to its own kind.

Suddenly Cromwell's body began to move. It underwent a series of increasingly severe convulsions, then his eyes opened wide and his mouth gasped and he drew in big, heaving breaths.

The convulsions stopped, although he continued to breathe hard. He managed after a moment to sit up, and he looked confused, then puzzled.

Karl Woodward watched it, and leaned forward. "Thomas? Can you hear me, Thomas?"

Somebody behind him said, "It's a miracle! Lazarus risen once more!"

Woodward turned to them and frowned. "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. It could be technology, or it could be the Opposition."

Cromwell had not responded to their calls; still, they watched him get unsteadily to his feet, look around, then shake his head in wonder, turn, and head back towards the shuttle. He left the suit where it was.

The technicians on the ground had heard but not seen the action. Still, they were unsure how to react when Cromwell returned to them.

"Brother Cromwell? Are you all right?" the botanist called to him.

The question seemed to throw him for a moment. "I—I'm not sure. I would swear upon a stack of Bibles that I've just died, but aside from a real burning in my gut someplace like a badly upset stomach, I feel okay. Damndest thing. Up until now I thought I'd already gone through everything. Now maybe I have." He shook his head as if to clear it. "My implants are dead. You still in contact above?"

"Yes, sir. They want you back up there and fast. The Doctor in particular."

He looked around. "Yeah, I think so, too. Any sign of the boy?"

"Boy?"

"Yes. I was with one of the survivors from the lifeboat. He wasn't there when I—came to."

"Not here."

"Well, without his gun he's no threat to whatever that is. I think we'll find him, sooner or later. Let's get back up there."

"Are you sure you're all right, sir?" one of the techs asked.

He nodded. "Once you die, everything else is an anticlimax," he responded.

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