[ Will Sand joins NEVERWORLDS for the first time with a terribly neat tale of first contact. ]
He touched and touched and all was the same.
Everything was hard as stone, as smooth as water.
His look bounced and bounced, no where to go.
He was in a cave within a cave within a cave.
### They were watching the monitors after untethering and carting the sixty pound object-species to their grounded ship’s onboard H-class Maze. The creature would be hungry. They had carefully packaged the food so it was recognizable by sight yet could not be found by scent.
The rest should be easy, at least for them. But easy work left time for thought, and Inscibe’s thoughts were decidedly uneasy.
Meldonnes heard Inscibe take the deep breath that usually preceded his tirades. She mentally braced herself. The man should be happy he had a job and stop splitting hairs.
"I didn’t get an MS for this BS," Inscibe spat out, gesturing at the screen in front of them. "Crypto-Culturalogist, bah! Somehow our profession should be above this."
He scowled at Meldonnes who by now was accomplished at studiously ignoring his outbursts.
"Here we are," he continued, "at the pinnacle of our careers thus far, putting some poor creature, which we both know deserves a life, through these biased tests, hoping it registers non-scale-intelligent. Just so we can feel okay about pushing them out of the way, while we plunder their planet’s resources." He finished with a sad shaking of his head.
"You watching the time?" Meldonnes asked flatly, without deigning to look at him. The very question underscored her thorough disrespect for her colleague. Two months alone with anyone you don’t love is too long. Two months alone with a professional burn-out was occasion for hazardous duty pay. The hazard was the charges she would face for murdering him. She wondered if that fantasy was bolstering or undermining her sanity.
"Am I watching the time?" Inscibe sneered. He provocatively turned away from the instruments and presumed to lecture her. "That is my one grand and grave duty right now. Watch and see if this scared, pitiful creature can improve on its last time through the maze. Impress us, as we impress ourselves. Wear the mantle of budding intelligence. Maybe someday it too can exploit anyone and anything weaker. Become a mover and shaker of worlds."
Meldonnes just held her tongue. The less she said, the less he said. Noticing his flushed, sweaty face, she wondered what untoward fantasies he was harboring.
On the monitor the creature had stopped. Stopped moving. Stopped trying.
### Again.
Again kept hungry.
Again thrown into a cave-cave.
The same cave-cave, he soon figured out.
There would be food.
Food to be found.
They—his captors—wanted this from him.
Why?
He didn’t know.
Only this—he wouldn’t give it to them.
He couldn’t win by going to the food.
He could win by not.
That would stop them.
He would not let them know him.
Not take what he was.
Not take what the Garogea were.
### Somehow it felt like a victory over Inscibe. He was bringing out the worst in her, she recognized. Of course this was the result Meldonnes wanted, because, hell, she wanted what her employer wanted—what was wrong with that? But, still, it didn’t have to feel so good!
"That’s it," she announced, already recording the results. The Commission wasn’t a stickler for exhaustive tests. "Species 462-77d+ has proved non-rights-bearing."
Inscibe’s long face made her want to laugh. She gave in to a peevish desire to incite him. "Now we just need to determine which condiment goes best with them."
She watched as Inscibe’s sad face hardened.
"Tasteful as ever, Meldonnes. Have your fun, but we haven’t proved anything."
"The hell we haven’t." Somehow, in just those few words, he had dissipated her humor and drawn her into his petty bickering. She gestured toward the thick books on their shared desk top. "Look up the regulations."
"The regs!" Inscibe spat. "What are we, hacks?"
Meldonnes snorted. "More or less. You just realizing that now?"
"Well, I’m not as dead set on being Poster Person for the Commission as you evidently are."
"So quit. I happen to believe in working for my employer."
"Look, Mel"—adopting a placating attitude—"back there in the maze… stopping doesn’t mean stupid."
"Then why don’t you stop and show me how smart you are?"
He wouldn’t give it up. "We’ve never had a stop before. A stop shows calculation… imagination… defiance…. Something. It thinks."
"Enough! It failed and I’ve signed off."
"Regs, Mel, regs. It takes two signatures."
Meldonnes took a deep breath. She would have to keep her cool. Outlast the bastard.
"There are other tests, Mel."
"Tests we’ve never used. Tests nobody ever uses. Just… just academic stuff, sophomoric exercises." And drop this ‘Mel’ shit, she thought.
But he was already putting on the heavy protective clothing they wore to handle the test species.
Give me a break! she thought. Well, there were any number of tests. She looked over at the heavy manual. The bible of their discipline, she hadn’t consulted it since graduate school, a decade ago. Dammit, she would choose the test design, one that Inscibe would not much like.
### After an hour with the manual, she found one to her liking.
"Okay, one more test. A modification of a certified test. My test. Agreed?"
"Sure, that’s fair." Inscibe nodded, pleased with her acquiescence.
She started to lay it out. "All tests are based on motivation. Something against which to measure success or failure. Food is the classic motivator. Another is pain."
She noticed that Inscibe was still nodding. The jerk.
"We only have so much equipment," she continued, affably. "The guidelines allow for improvisation. Although unfamiliar surroundings are optimal for quick assessment, the species’ own environment can be used effectively. Preset obstacles and isolation can offset variables. All proven techniques and qualifiers."
Inscibe had stopped nodding and was staring at her. He was waiting for the next shoe to drop.
### Fed.
Hard-tied to a rock.
Left alone.
Alone in no-land.
No-land because no water.
Cold. Soon colder.
Hard-tied.
### They were walking back to the ship. The long slog was considerably easier without a squirming burden. A broad hill, barren but colorful (rich in ores Meldonnes noted), isolated the test site from both themselves and other creatures (far from its niche Inscibe noted). They couldn’t reliably test in its home area, where who knows what interactions might contaminate test results; nor in the ship, where in their presence the creature had a history of freezing up in the middle of a test. Of course, it might literally freeze in the course of this test.
Meldonnes knew Inscibe had some questions, if not objections. They had set off with her minimal "Come on, it’ll be faster just to show you." She had wanted things well under way before he could object. Now, on the way back, with the test started and with plenty of breath for speaking, she took his silence for sullenness. Well, she’d take his silence any way she could get it.
They were halfway back, downhill now, when Inscibe couldn’t hold it in any longer.
"So the motivation is to live. Not die. Brilliant design." He felt slightly sick.
"You’re the one who wanted another test." She turned her hands palms up. "The stronger the motive, the greater the chance for success. Isn’t that what you want?"
Inscibe muttered something she didn’t quite get. Then she realized it was that ridiculous students’ slogan of the late ‘50’s: ‘Be benign that none be benighted.’ He had slowed, hanging his head, looking pathetic.
His despondency excited her. It gave her a giddy sense of superiority. Was she growing personally or deteriorating psychologically? Either way, she enjoyed lecturing a dejected Inscibe:
"Look, the creature need only free itself. There are three release mechanisms. The combination of the over-sized lock is easy, just a simple 3-point progression. It saw us demonstrate that operation. And the chain has a color-coded trick link, obviously different, that can be manipulated."
"The third way?"
"I don’t know. The manual pointedly didn’t specify. One way is supposed to be unknown to us, kind of a double blind. It obviously involves that battery; possibly shocks. I didn’t look for it, explicitly directed not to."
Inscibe stopped and gestured half-heartedly to his left. The planet’s sun was hanging low in the yellowing sky. "The creature won’t survive the night." More like a persistent twilight. With a dozen moons, it never got actually dark. Just cold.
"Short test then. We get to go home."
"Inhuman."
"It’s inhuman to harm an intelligent being. If the creature lives, there was no harm. If it dies, there was no intelligence."
"Very neat."
"Very human."
"Very you."
### Big knot.
Parts move.
Move in circles.
In shapes.
In colors.
Out. Want out.
Move. Movemovemove.
Colderer.
### "I wish we could see how it’s doing." Worried.
"We’ll see tomorrow. Isolation. Obstacle. Motivation. Not complicated by observers. Simple." Competent.
They finished their dinner and went to sleep in their ship’s warm shell.
### Out.
Stop.
Stop them.
Same tie. Same knot.
Same.
### They awoke. Both were eager to see a different result. Both…
"The hatch won’t open!" Meldonnes quickly progressed from surprise to frustration to desperation.
Through a port they could see the chain. It was looped around the outside handle and then through the two hand-holds of their sole hatch. The big lock gleamed in the early light. It would be easy to open. It would be impossible to get to.
Realization set in. They—one humiliated, the other amused—took off for the nearest colony. Some hard-hat would get a good bar tale out of releasing the two intelligence-testers from their own ship.
Inscibe couldn’t resist a last dig.
"Tell me, Meldonnes. What condiment goes best with eating crow?"
Will Sand is a retired chiropractor living on the central coast of California. He has been published in Aberrations, Ultimate Unknown, and online (Dark Planet, Twilight Times, Exodus, Blue Pages, Antipodean and Ibn Qirtaiba). His body as old as the President's and his website as new as the millennium. (Please visit http://www.redshift.com/~wsandtt/)