Her first reaction was anger and fear. Then, as the adrenalin rush took hold, warrior Tatia surfaced, as she had done on Cancri. The creature was slow. So was the weapon. There was no way she’d die on this fucking planet.
Tatia ran at the creature with a fury born of desperation, and reached for the weapon. A tentacle pushed her hands away. She’d expected the tentacles to be soft, but this one was hard and bruising as steel.
Tatia spat her rage.
The area where her spittle landed immediately turned black. The tentacles vanished and the weapon fell to the ground.
Tatia spat again.
The whole body shivered as the surface turned brown and visibly hardened.
She spat again. Then had to step back as the alien flattened itself into a broad mass no more than a few centimetres high and oozed away from her.
She thought about peeing on it but instead picked up the weapon, flicked a few squirmy things from the barrel, pointed the business end at the creature and pulled what she hoped was a trigger.
It was. The air between creature and Tatia somehow thickened and turned pale blue. A large hole appeared on the alien’s surface. It screamed.
Screamed in her mind. The first strong telepathic contact she’d had. There’d been shadows of thought before, from other dying aliens, but incomprehensible and fleeting. This one was strong. Pain. Disgust. Hate.
Ironic that the one alien whom she could vaguely understand saw her as hateful and disgusting. As she did it.
She fired again. The alien split open to show a runny pink interior, then was swarmed over by squirmy things from the ground.
Pain and anger again.
She fired until there was nothing left of the alien except a scent of roses strong enough to overpower the usual stink.
* * *
Tatia sat in the doorway to her pod, checking herself for squirmy things as three Originators watched from a safe distance. Satisfied she was free of mini-aliens, Tatia went inside her pod. It immediately rejoined the ship.
< That was fun.
> So how did it see me?
< I detected infra-red, ultra-violet and radar emissions.
> You don’t think I should have killed it?
< It was trying to get away.
> Ooze away.
> It had less choice in life than you.
There was a repeat of the screeching sound and the ship’s force field snapped on. A moment later they were rising lazily into the sky. Tatia didn’t look back.
> So what was all that about?
< Possibly a test?
But for what?
Maybe the next planet would answer the question. Tatia was sure there’d be one, as she knew the Originators weren’t top pre-cog dog.
Meanwhile:
> Do you know all about me?
< I have your history, yes.
> Including about my mother?
< You sure it’s wise...
> Answer me!
< Yes. About your mother.
> You can show me? I could hear her voice?
Tatia closed her eyes and saw a tall, blonde woman with a serious expression, lightened by the laughter lines at the corners of her mouth.
And a voice – warm, loving – said, “Hi, baby girl, long time no see.”
An AI creation, yes. But what’s the difference between real and false? When real is what you need, whatever works.
> You wanted a name. I’m calling you Mom, sometimes Mother. You will always use this voice.
A dread thought that never went away: how do I know it is an AI? Could be schizophrenia. Dread voices in the head.
The tears came and Tatia fell asleep dreaming of an unknown childhood.
* * *
Thirty-five years earlier
Deadhead was one of the first bootleg colonies. It was a green and blue planet with three moons, one of them striped purple and gold. Five thousand light years from Earth and around the same size. Founded by three and a half thousand stoner retro fanatics from the West Coast and Midwest of what was still, just about, the USA. All deep in love with the nineteen sixties and seventies and convinced the universe was a psi affair: telepathy, telekinesis, future scrying. They needed privacy to grow. To be ourselves. To preserve our goddamn identity, fer crissake.
The coming of aliens meant a world subsumed by the shock of the new. Aliens and their tech became the only fashion, the only art that mattered, until the world calmed down a little. Even so: You say you’re alternative? But alternative to what?
That was how an average artist, or a good artist doing average work, became world class: aliens collected Marc Keislack’s work.
In time there’d be a revival of interest in the past. Yet Kara Jones’ fascination with twentieth-century TV and movies would be considered a little pointless. The real excitement, people knew, the real beauty and truth always came from the future and outer space.
* * *
Before GalDiv got some control, the Gliese and other aliens swarmed over Earth with shiny tech to trade. The Gliese had star drives and people knew about the trade.
On a fine spring morning in Roswell – before it was swallowed by the Albuquerque City State – a group of Retros traded thirty terminally ill volunteers for a mega-powerful sideslip-field generator and anti-grav unit. The volunteers knew they were going to be cured. The Retros hoped they were.
The idea was to go there, and not come back for a long while. Any space voyaging would be done in and around their new home. Unless there was uncool or even a bummer, in which case somewhere else would beckon. The spaceship – this was before they were called space utility transports – was a former cruise liner, a real ship with a promenade deck, three pools, twelve bars and memories of quick, cheating sex because out of sight of land means yes, you can.
Their supplies contained seeds of opium poppies, marijuana, coca, the spores of every hallucinogenic mushroom and a medical lab that could produce acid, meth and weapons-grade heroin. There were real chemists, doctors, nurses and people who knew precisely how to
