The Symbionts of Murkor Read online

  “A few, a few,” Schulman responded, shaking his head in feigned remorse.

  “Damn right you did, and I’m one of them,” somebody shouted to more laughter. Ellis let it subside before forging ahead.

  “One additional measure will be necessary. The frequency of missions needs to be increased.”

  The pronouncement had an unexpectedly chilling effect, laughter being suddenly replaced by a steel bulwark of angry faces. Whatever small gains she made winning the crew over had quickly evaporated. She took immediate note of where military personnel, thankfully in uniform, were sitting. Zenith’s physician, Stewart, was by herself at the far edge of the group. The others were intermingled with IMC workers, including Lieutenant Davis, parked in the last row next to his friend. With the possible exception of Stewart, they had maintained an uneasy silence as she rolled out the bad news. It was unlikely they’d directly disobey her orders, but if she couldn’t earn their confidence her job would become that much tougher.

  “Permission to speak freely, Commander.” The request , unexpectedly, originated from Davis.

  “If it’s on point, of course.”

  “Always. At issue is going out and about—that’s what we call being on the surface and entering the tubes. Crews are feeling increasingly uneasy. And what’s the point if you’re returning with a hump nearly empty of water.”

  Ellis tried to ignore the murmur of assent that greeted the remarks. “Would you rather run out?” she said, leaving no room for alternatives. “I expect you and Mr. Kreechum to revise the mission schedule. Make sure no one is assigned a disproportionate share of duty.” The new order. She was informing both of them, along with everyone present, that such operational decisions were no longer going to be made unilaterally by IMC.

  “Mr. Anderson,” Ellis continued. “For the present, the modification you made to CAM-L1 I’m going to let stand as is. But let’s be clear. The purpose of increasing the vehicle’s operational range is to extend missions within Zenith’s EZ. There shall be absolutely no encroachment into Nadir’s territory. As for CAM-L2, you’ve given me sufficient reason to believe you can transfer oxygen tanks from the harvester into it.”

  “Effectively putting us out of business,” Anderson again protested, angrily looking toward the IMC foreman for support.

  “And ending any chance we had of a profitable mining venture,” Kreechum said, his voice rising. “That’s not exactly why you were sent here, is it, Commander? I suspect Coalition representatives on Varian will be quite displeased when hearing of your intentions. Yes, yes—they’ll have a lot of questions about what you’re asking us to do.”

  “You may be correct in that,” Ellis replied, signaling the end of the meeting. “Except, I’m not asking.”

  ***

  Near the end of a tough first day, Ellis was called out to a disturbance in one of Zenith’s well-equipped recreation rooms. Two men had gotten into a fight, in the process inflicting only superficial damage on each other but a goodly amount on the holo-sims that were to have kept them entertained.

  Physical confrontations were certainly within the realm of what could be expected, especially on a base where morale was low. The identities of the combatants was both a surprise and a disappointment. One of the men, sporting an expression somewhere between amused and contrite, was Lieutenant Davis; the other, scowling and defiant, was Ed Anderson. They had been separated by what is often the most effective barrier in such a situation, a woman, Captain Stewart. No longer able to beat on each other, their belligerence was redirected toward the wider universe in general. Lurking in the background, several IMC men were, with bemused interest, watching how the new CO would handle the situation.

  Ellis first looked to Stewart for an explanation.

  “By the time I showed up,” Stewart volunteered, “most of the real excitement had died down. Neither one has offered an explanation for his actions. I doubt one exists. Both are drunk as skunks.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Ellis said, stepping in front of Davis. “Are you even worth addressing, Lieutenant?”

  Davis attempted a salute. “Just a bit of roughhousin’, Ma’am, Capitán, Kahhhmander. Can’t call you Sir, no Sir. Not with a full chest—I mean a chest full of medals.”

  Anderson, unsteady on his feet, sneered out his version of a rejoinder.

  “—but no guts—siding with a few fucking Tinos…”

  “Just as I suspected, both of them useless,” Ellis said, surveying the damage inflicted on the room. “Captain Stewart, since these men seem to have no regard for civilized behavior, I am revoking their rec room privileges for a month. As for the present, see to it that they are confined to quarters. Have them remain there until such time as you determine they are fit to return to society.”

  Ellis turned away, having no desire to see the men’s reaction. In their current alcoholic stupor, both were insensate.

  Upon returning to her living quarters, Ellis voiced her last two commands of the day: Darkening the viewport to block out blue bursts of lightning from the planet’s magnetic storms, then dimming the room lighting to coax a more relaxing ambience.

  Further interruptions were unlikely. Dealing with the irritating conduct of others could be postponed to a time when her thoughts would be clearer.

  From her duffel bag she removed and changed into loose-fitting clothing, then unrolled her sticky mat near the center of the room. Assuming the lotus position, she began to meditate. Within a few minutes she approached the state of mind which excluded all else.

  It wasn’t to be. Although she had subdued the hallway lighting for the evening, she had overlooked shutting the door to her living quarters. Stewart, peering through the opening, was polite enough to knock.

  “Commander? Sorry if I’m disturbing you. I’ll come back. This is mostly a social call—it can wait.”

  It took a second or two for Ellis to reply. “No, Captain. Enter,” she said, choosing to remain in the lotus position. “We shall keep this informal.”

  “I apologize for interrupting your meditation,” Stewart said, sitting with her back against a couch. “May I inquire how accomplished you are?”

  “I can completely relax my body and mind,” Ellis replied, choosing the simplest explanation possible.

  Stewart was impressed. “Excellent. I’m afraid the discipline didn’t work for me. Making my mind go blank tripped me up. I couldn’t seem to manage it. From there it only got worse. I started thinking about how I wasn’t able to clear my mind of thought. Do you know what came next?”

  “You started thinking about how you shouldn’t be thinking about not being able to clear your mind?”

  “Yes!” Stewart said, laughing. “How’d you know?”

  “It’s the usual trap, and why the first stage is concentrating on your breathing to help calm the mind. Meaningless distractions fade, replaced with images, feelings, emotions. A totality. A sense of beingness.”

  “You’re telling me I had it wrong?” Stewart asked.

  “Seems so.”

  “Looks like you’ve given me something to think about.”

  “Not while you’re meditating,” Ellis returned, and they both smiled.

  “I imagine disciplining the mind must be of help—especially after a day like you had today,” Stewart said, suggesting more was on her mind.

  “Are you here about this morning’s meeting or the altercation?” Ellis asked.

  “Since there may actually be three or four of us on base who can commiserate with how you handled the former, I’ll go with the latter—that is, if you can stand to hear some unsolicited advice regarding Anderson and Davis.”

  “Why not? I gave you some on meditation. I assumed the two were friends. What precipitated the fight?”

  “They still are friends. What caused the fight is Murkor.”

  “I get it,” Ellis said. She had heard similar talk from Trenchon. “Nobody, including me, particularly enjoys being here.”

  “It’s on
e thing to know something intellectually, quite another to experience it directly. You haven’t been on Murkor long enough to feel it. And, unlike Davis and Anderson and most everyone else on base, you haven’t been outside. Speaking as base physician, the prospect of longer missions is more disturbing than you give credence.”

  “Perhaps so. For the time being, there’s no other remedy. As far as understanding—I have every intention of going, as they say ‘out and about.’ You have?”

  “Yes. The surface is a dreary, dangerous, obnoxious place. Inside the lava tubes is worse—disconcerting.”

  “Disconcerting? Strange word to use. A bit vague coming from a physician.”

  “You’ll hear stranger descriptions.”

  “What’s this got to do with the two men?”

  “The punishment you meted out is more severe than you may believe. Withholding their privileges for a month, curtailing the social interaction that keeps them preoccupied, may accomplish just the opposite of what you intend. There’s something else. I see Davis being caught in the middle between you and Anderson. You may be pushing him in the wrong direction. There’s no doubt he’ll want to be loyal. But to whom? You, as CO, or to Anderson, a friend whom he shared many a common experience?”

  “I will consider what you said,” Ellis replied, “but the punishment must stand as is. I may risk losing Davis’s loyalty, but if I waver, if I rescind the order, I risk losing everyone else’s cooperation.”

  “I hope you’re right in that assessment,” Stewart said, disappointed.

  “If I appear intractable concerning the men’s’ punishment,” Ellis said, “it is because I have a particular aversion to violence.” In the room’s subdued lighting, she could see that the remark caught Stewart unawares.

  “Earlier today,” Stewart said, “expectations concerning you were quite a bit different. There is a story circulating regarding your involvement in an altercation on Varian.”

  Ellis waited.

  “What, if anything, happened there?” Stewart asked.

  “I give you credit, Captain, you’re the first person to actually ask me that question. Everyone else seems rather content living with the rumor.”

  “Rumors are self-sustaining—especially when they coincide with what people want to believe.”

  “This maxim doesn’t apply to you?” Ellis asked.

  “No. The truth, even when unpleasant, is preferable.”

  “I’ll tell you why I was unceremoniously booted off Varian,” Ellis said, violating a personal rule by sharing more about herself than she was accustomed to. “Ever hear of Major Charles Eglend?”

  “The Major Eglend?” Stewart answered, frowning. “Better known as Major Ego Eglend. He has a reputation as a womanizer.”

  “He’s a reprobate asshole if you ask the female contingent on Varian. Most of the men on base know it too, only they prefer to label it as an overactive libido. It’s a familiar story. His rank made him immune to censure. Until I came along, that is, and added the word “no” to his vocabulary. I wanted nothing to do with him, only he just wasn’t getting it—not verbally.”

  “I think I see where this is going,” Stewart said, eager to hear the rest of the story.

  “Major Ego was physically fit and, like most men, he had about thirty kilograms on me. One evening, it was late hour at the gym, he backed me against a wall. The conversation went something like this: ‘You’re in my face, Major.’ ‘Is that a problem, Jennifer?’ ‘It’s going to be your problem, Major.’

  “He grinned, one of those sick, lascivious grins, and pressed into me. I ducked under his arms. When he spun around and came at me, I twisted his arm at the shoulder, using it as leverage. I sent him sprawling. While this was taking place another male officer, a friend of his, happened to walk in. They decided I ‘needed to learn a lesson.’ Up until then I was hoping to extricate myself from this tragic-comedy without a whole lot of fuss. They made it impossible. I broke the major’s nose with the palm of my hand. The other officer backed off after I fractured his wrist.”

  “Wow! Good for you, Jennifer! Sorry, I meant to say Commander. You filed charges, of course.”

  “Not exactly. And you can call me El when in private,” Ellis suggested. She was starting to like the base physician. “There were no witnesses, so together they concocted a plausible scenario to save themselves the embarrassment of me having kicked both their butts, while undermining the obvious question of why a fifty-four kilogram female would need to defend herself against two rather imposing men in a lonely gym. Their story had the added benefit of putting the episode in a bad light for me.”

  “Tell me,” Stewart entreated.

  “The two bastards claimed they fought each other. Over me.”

  “What?!” Stewart shouted, amazed and angry.

  “And they pulled it off, formally ‘apologizing’ to each other, their version of the incident subsequently relegated to a mild censure entered into their respective military record. I protested, of course, if for no other reason to prevent a woman less capable of defending herself from being subjected to the same treatment. There were people on base who actually believed me, mainly those who saw me train at the gym. Anyway, that’s when and why the rumors started. Two conflicting stories, nobody certain of their veracity. In the end, no formal inquiry was opened.”

  “I can see why they sent you packing. Didn’t you want to leave?”

  “Yes and no. They could make life difficult for me on base, although I did kinda relish being a thorn in Major Ego’s side. In choosing my reassignment they got a little too cute. In the warped thinking of military brass—those few who actually knew what really happened—I was now treated as a hostile bitch. I can assure you, Michele, that is the furthest thing from the truth. Nevertheless, when the Major and Varian’s two-star were asked by Coalition politicos who might be best suited to deal with the situation on Murkor my name catapulted to the top of the list.” Ellis paused. “How do you see their recommendation working out so far?”

  “Not so well.”

  Later, alone in the quiet, Ellis considered how her refusal to violate Nadir’s EZ, while not motivated by revenge, would be perceived that way by the men who ordered her to Murkor. The thought of their discomfort gave her a moment of satisfaction. Although it was a feeling unworthy of the practice of samatha, attainment of a tranquil and balanced mind, the feeling could only be suppressed. It arose from too deep a place to completely eradicate.

  What actually motivated her actions was a tragic miscalculation she made years ago and parsecs away.

  4. Out and About

  WITH RAIDS INTO NADIR’S territory forbidden, it was necessary to undertake longer and more frequent missions to the cavernous lava tubes lying beneath Zenith’s EZ. Acting on Ellis’s explicit order from the previous day, a disgruntled trio comprised of Lieutenant Brian Davis and two IMC techs loaded into the extended-range CAM-L and set out across Murkor’s treacherous surface.

  Notwithstanding the urgency to find water, there was a deep-seated aversion to leaving the security of base. An appreciation of this mindset is impossible without understanding what it is like to exist on Murkor—an exercise that requires mingling scientific fact with speculation, in the process obliterating the line that normally separates the two.

  It is certain that Murkor’s dissolution harks back a million years, to that instant when a chunk of iron half the size of Ayers Rock slammed into the planet, wobbling its axial rotation and stripping away most of its life, water, and atmosphere. Perhaps it is the forlorn remnants of a once vibrant world that renders Murkor an unsettling place for human activity.

  Murkor has a gravitational mass equivalent to eighty percent of Earth’s and rotational velocity resulting in a nineteen Standard Earth Hour day. Science has proven that there are physiological and psychological disorders caused by such variations from Earth norms. Subject to conjecture, however, is the effect of Murkor’s wobble, from which proceed two bizarre phenomenon.


  First, the planet, wobbling on its axis, produces an erratic and subliminal waxing and waning of sunlight intensity as the sun transits through the sky. The second anomaly occurs at the beginning and end of each day. It is then that the sun appears to briefly defy the laws governing astronomical bodies by moving laterally along the horizon. A handful of Murkor’s inhabitants insist that they have witnessed the setting sun momentarily begin to rise and a rising sun begin to set. The finer point to be made is that if the ever constant sun was reinterpreted by the mind as unpredictable and capricious then perhaps everything on the planet was subject to examination and suspicion.

  There had been no scientific study of Murkor’s oppressively hot climate. Nor was any planned. There was little weather. No warm or cold fronts. No rain. Only a prevalent atmospheric haze, acting as a tinting lens, dimming the sun and imparting to it a ruddy look, or sepia, or some other putrid shade of brown. Never did the sun achieve a brightening color that would evoke, as on Earth, the phrase “the giver of life.” When not obscured behind a pile of sooty clouds (the vapors and particulates spewed out of fumaroles) the sun was so attenuated in luminosity that at midday (if such an event could be precisely determined) it could be safely viewed with the naked eye.

  The principal weather-related hazard, other than heat stroke, was from violent windstorms called “rollers”—named for their physical appearance, that of a tornado flipped on its side. It was not unusual to see one or two meandering menacingly along the horizon. Long and wide as a fifty-story building, and short-lived (perhaps expiring from the weight of accumulated pumice and lava shards), a roller encounter was considered unlikely. The powerful storm could make quick work of a slow-moving CAM-L—a vehicle unequipped with instrumentation to predict the storm’s erratic direction.

  When the sun went down (sideways some insisted) crews outright refused to go out and about, the darkness so pervasive it imparted a feeling of apprehension and claustrophobia which even a CAM-L’s halogen running lights failed to dispel. Murkor was bereft an illuminating moon. The few stars struggling to poke through the murk could only flicker exhaustively before being snuffed out either by the planet’s debris field or its particulate-laden atmosphere.