Saucer: Savage Planet

5

Rip, Charley and Uncle Egg each suspected that Adam Solo had a very interesting story, but the thousand-year number left them stunned.

As usual, Rip recovered first. “What about the starship that delivered you?”

“It didn’t return either.”

“If that thousand-year number gets out,” Rip said to Solo, “your life won’t be worth a paper dollar.”

Solo nodded. “They won’t believe a word I say; they’ll kill me and do an autopsy.”

Charley groaned. “Surely not.”

“Oh, yes,” Egg said grimly.

Solo’s lips twisted into a grimace. “I’ve been in tighter spots. Three hundred and some odd years ago in Massachusetts, Samuel Parris decided I was a male witch. That was a close squeak.”

Egg seated himself on a stool at the kitchen counter, which he rarely did because the round seat was too small for his fundament. “Convince us you are telling the truth,” he said flatly. “Tell us why you are here on this planet.”

Solo glanced from face to face, then said, “I am a librarian. This planet is a giant DNA library. My colleagues and I came to check the library, to make deposits and withdrawals, as we do from time to time, and to take DNA samples from plants and animals.”

“Roswell, New Mexico, 1947. Were those your colleagues?”

“Yes. Here to look for us, probably. At least I have their ship. Unfortunately someone shot it up with an antimatter weapon and destroyed the communications equipment.”

“That would be me,” Charley Pine said modestly.

Solo smiled at her, then said, “I need your help. I must use the comm gear in the saucer you have sitting outside on the stone.”

“It’s a bit small.”

“That is a problem. I need it brought back to its full size so that I can get inside and talk to the computers. And talk to my controllers, ask them to send a rescue ship.”

“You people haven’t been doing so well on this planet,” Egg observed. “What makes you think they’ll send a rescue mission?”

Solo shrugged. “Who knows if they even can? At least I can report in. The galaxy is a large, hostile place. We are a few tiny blobs of protoplasm, wandering back and forth between the stars. Death could happen at any moment.”

“Or you could live for a thousand years.”

“Either way, one will eventually be dead forever, which is indeed a long, long time.” Solo smiled. “All that matters is the adventure along the way.”

“Do you really believe that?” Uncle Egg asked sharply.

Solo took in a bushel of air and exhaled through his nose. “Well, I used to.”

“Let me see if I understand you,” Charley Pine said with a toss of her head. “You people have introduced DNA samples into living creatures here on this planet? Is that correct?”

Solo shrugged. “That’s essentially correct, but—”

“You are using living creatures here on earth as hosts for alien DNA samples?”

“When you state it that way it sounds bad—”

“Don’t you damned aliens have any ethics at all?”

For the first time, Solo’s voice hardened. “A few strands of DNA introduced into a host may well be the only way to preserve the information it contains. If the DNA doesn’t interfere with the host’s life or ability to reproduce, what better way to preserve the information? Everything made by man decays, erodes, eventually returns to dust. Planets come and go, stars burn out, asteroids journey erratically through the solar systems … only living creatures have the ability to resist the ravages of time. The bottom line — if your species becomes extinct you’ve lost your race.”

Egg prepared dinner. A lifelong bachelor who appreciated good food, he was an excellent cook. Tonight his heart wasn’t in it. He kept glancing out the window into the evening darkness.

“They’ll be back,” Rip said, reading his uncle’s mood. “That’s what you are worried about, isn’t it?”

Egg whacked a spoon on the counter and glared fiercely. “At times the world is a miserable place. That maniac Douglas shot out my windows. He cares nothing of the consequences if he gets what he wants.”

Rip tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. John Sutter discovered gold at his mill in California in 1849 and died a pauper. Greedy people took every acre, everything he had. He had faced a human tsunami, and inevitably he lost.

“Sometimes the law breaks down,” Rip observed. “Civilization isn’t so civilized.” He glanced at Charley, who had poured a glass of wine for Solo and one for herself. They were sipping it and chatting.

He glanced at Uncle Egg, who was standing in front of the stove examining his spoon. It was bent double. Apparently Egg had bent it without realizing what he was doing.

They ate dinner in Egg’s living room with their plates on their laps as a wood fire in the fireplace threw off heat and cast a cheery glow.

As they ate, the Cantrells and Charley Pine gently questioned Adam Solo. “Tell us about your home, the planet and society in which you grew up,” Egg suggested. He had been mining the memories of the Sahara saucer’s crew and knew not only where they were from but their life histories and families as they remembered them. He was curious how Solo’s history differed.

Solo was reluctant. “It was a long time ago, and I have only fleeting memories. My parents, my brother and sister, the friends I grew up with, my classmates, all gone now. Have been dead for thousands of your years.” He shook his head slowly. “For many years I tried to keep their memories fresh, to warm me as I tried to cope with life upon this savage planet. Then I let them go, let them dribble away like sand through my fingers.” He paused, cleared his throat, then started playing with the food on his plate. “It is better that way, I think.”

The silence that followed was broken by Rip. “Tell us of your adventures here, on earth.”

“We landed upon an island. We knew it was an island when we landed. We didn’t know what to expect. We hadn’t explored much when my colleague stole the saucer, which still contained our portable comm gear, and flew away. We never saw him again.” Solo shrugged. “He wasn’t a pilot, but perhaps he knew enough to rendezvous with the starship. Probably he told them we were all dead.”

“He never returned?”

“Neither him nor anyone from the starship. One can only speculate, and of course we did. Whatever happened, the saucer never returned.”

“So you were marooned?”

“On an island on this green planet circling a modest star, on the edge of this humongous galaxy.”

They finished dinner as he talked of the natives, the warlords and their armed men, the knights, and the Vikings who raided occasionally. The fire burned low, but no one was willing to break the spell to throw more wood on. Solo’s voice was mesmerizing; the adventure came alive in his listeners’ imagination.

“It was a difficult time for everyone. The native people’s agriculture was barely adequate, they routinely starved in winter, the place was damp and rainy … My two companions and I were soon as cold, hungry and dirty as the people around us. To survive, we had to blend in, to become them. We quickly acquired the language while we waited for our saucer to return, or another from the starship. One of my colleagues was killed and the other died soon after.”

At last, when the hour was late and the fire sputtered out, Egg announced, “It is time for bed. We will talk more tomorrow. Adam, you will have my guest room.”

When Charley and Rip were in bed, Charley whispered, because Solo was in the next room, “Did you believe him tonight?”

“He told us nothing that proves he is what he says he is.”

Charley thought about that. “He flew the Roswell saucer.”

“You flew the one we found in the Sahara, and you are not an alien. The fact is suggestive, but certainly not proof.”

Charley persisted. “I thought he was telling the truth,” she said.

“Or what he believes to be the truth. It will take more than stories to convince me.”

“He didn’t look happy tonight as he talked,” Charley observed. “I was watching his eyes. He chose his words carefully.”

“Liars often do,” Rip observed. “Or the mentally ill.”

“Or a man trying to avoid painful memories,” Charley shot back. After a bit she mused, “What would it be like to live a thousand years? To stay healthy and active and busy with life?”

“To outlive all the people you loved?” Rip continued the thought. “To watch everyone you care about age and die, one by one? He was never truly one of them. He was a stranger, different in a profound way. Ah, he avoided the disabilities and indignities of old age, so far, but at what cost?”

“If he is telling the truth,” Charley said.

“If,” Rip agreed.

“Douglas and Murkowsky are greedy men, sociopaths incapable of shame or remorse. They’ll be back.”

“Sleep, woman. We’ll need our strength tomorrow.”

Stretched out in Egg’s guest room, Solo could not sleep. He ran over the events of the day, his impressions of Egg, Rip and Charley, and then his mind began to replay memories of the old days, when he and his colleagues were first marooned. There was much he hadn’t told his listeners this evening. He didn’t tell them of the battles and the blood, the battle axes and swords, nor of his Viking days. Nor of the cold winters, the miserable little huts, the fleas and lice. People dying of wounds and disease. The struggles, the hopelessness.

Nor did he mention the woman.

He finally fell asleep and dreamed of her.

Egg Cantrell couldn’t sleep either. He sat on the edge of his bed with the light on, looking at the dark windows and thinking about Douglas and Murkowsky and all those people watching on television, all those people out there in the night who thought a Fountain of Youth pill would be a wonderful thing to have, or who would like to profit from it. He thought those two categories included just about everyone. Maybe he was the only exception alive on this small planet. What was Solo’s phrase? “This savage planet.”

The computer he had taken from Rip’s saucer was in its case beside his bed. The formula was in its memory. No one would believe him if he said it wasn’t.

Perhaps he should hide the darn thing.

Yet when Douglas or some other thug put a pistol to Rip or Charley’s head, he would tell them where it was. He knew that. They knew that.

He sighed and slowly put his clothes back on, then worked on getting his shoes laced. His ample middle always made shoes a chore.

Dressed, he stood and picked up the computer case. He tiptoed along the hallway and down the stairs. Eased open the front door and closed it softly behind him.

The president wasn’t having a quiet evening in the White House; far from it. A delegation from Congress arrived at midnight, threading their way through a mob that had gathered in Lafayette Square, across the street. The mob was unruly, waving signs and chanting about government perfidy.

When P. J. O’Reilly relayed the information about the mob, the president sighed. Life in a free society is often messy.

Yet when O’Reilly told him the congressional delegation was on the way over to see him, the president’s mood deteriorated dramatically. “What do those bastards want?”

“Three guesses,” O’Reilly answered blithely. Like the president, he too had been watching the media meltdown on every channel on television. People were sure the government knew about the Fountain of Youth drug; the elderly and sick were demanding answers. Politicians were spewing sound bites right and left, promising that they would get to the bottom of the government’s cover-up and that if the drugs could be manufactured commercially, they would be. And would be made available to every man and woman on the planet at reasonable prices subsidized by the government and private insurance companies. Eternal life, or its earthly equivalent, was just around the corner.

Consequently, when the two dozen legislators filed into the White House’s East Room at midnight, the president was in a foul mood. The congresspeople didn’t care. They started talking immediately.

Senator Blohardt spoke louder than the others. “We are getting enormous pressure from our constituents. They want those drugs and they want ’em now.”

“What drugs?”

“Antiaging, for sure,” the senator said as his colleagues nodded their concurrence, “and cures for cancer and diabetes, a slimming pill, and a real honest-to-God cure for limp dick. In other words, a cure for every human malady. All of them.”

“All.”

“Anything and everything anybody ever heard of, including the common cold. Our switchboards are jammed, e-mails have crashed the servers, and the telephones have melted down. Everyone wants some magic drug, and they want the government to stop lying and dithering and get it for them.”

“I see,” the president said, and indeed, being a career politician, he certainly did see. The elected representatives were facing a tidal wave of unprecedented proportions. Their political careers were on the line. Deliver or else. Well, if their political careers were on the line, so was the president’s. He would get nothing from a Congress fighting for political survival.

P. J. O’Reilly stepped in and tried to suavely tell the assembled delegation that the government had not mined the Roswell saucer’s computers and didn’t know any drug formulas. He was shouted down.

“If we didn’t, we should have. What are we going to tell the public? That the U.S. government is incompetent?”

“Why not?” the president muttered. The elected ones said that all the time, twenty times a day. Out loud, so they could all hear, he said, “The fact is the Roswell saucer was put under lock and key in Area Fifty-one because the Truman administration was afraid the public would react badly to flying saucers and aliens from space. Subsequent administrations didn’t even know the damn thing was out there in that desert, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have had the guts to tell the public flying saucers were real. It was the Cold War, for God’s sake — the American people had their plates full confronting Communism and worrying about nuclear war.”

“Be that as it may,” the Speaker of the House said, “the public believes in flying saucers now, and the people want the benefits of saucer technology. All of them. Cures for diseases, enhancement of human life, all of that.”

“All,” echoed the president.

“The electorate will not be denied. If this administration and this Congress can’t or won’t deliver, they’ll elect a president and Congress that can. It’s that simple.”

“If they are willing to wait for the next election,” the Senate minority leader said ominously. “From the tone of the messages my office is getting, they might not be willing to wait anywhere near that long. They want it now!”

The delegation left shortly thereafter. Despite the lateness of the hour, each and every one of the senators and congressmen and women in attendance held a press conference on the sidewalk in front of the White House. The president watched some of the circus on television. They had told the president, they said. They had delivered the messages from their constituents.

“This is one of those seminal events that will change people’s political affiliations for generations,” O’Reilly said. “Like the Great Depression. If we don’t act, the foundations of America will crack like a rotten egg. But if we play this right”—he rubbed his hands and grinned—“we’ll take all the marbles.”

The president had rarely seen O’Reilly grin, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He felt for his Rolaids bottle. “We’ll go to Missouri in the morning,” he said. “Tell them to get Air Force One ready.”

“Should I have the press secretary make an announcement?”

“Hell, no. Let’s keep it quiet, like we were going to Baghdad. We don’t want this to turn into a media feeding frenzy.”

O’Reilly merely raised his eyebrows. The president still didn’t get it, he decided. The poor devil.

Egg Cantrell was up before dawn making coffee. He hadn’t slept more than an hour. He turned on the kitchen television … and was astounded to see a picture of his farmhouse.

Egg looked out the unbroken kitchen window and saw the lights from the TV trucks and news sets. Not one, but three … four … five. Five sets of lights, and cameras, and satellite trucks. He went to the living room and saw another light setup.

The farm was under siege.

Egg raced around ensuring the doors were locked. He put the telephone back on its cradle, then picked it up. Got a dial tone. Called 911.

When the dispatcher picked up, Egg started talking. He gave his name and address. “My property has been invaded by news crews. I need the sheriff, as soon as possible. I’m willing to file trespass charges.”

“Are your really Egg Cantrell?” the female dispatcher asked, her disbelief evident in her voice.

“I sure am. My house is under siege by reporters and photographers, all of whom are trespassing. I need the sheriff here to enforce the law and get these people off my property.”

“Do you have that antiaging drug?”

“No, and—”

“My mother is in a nursing home. She’s nearly ninety and senile. I sure could use some of those pills. For her, you understand.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Egg said, trying to be patient. “Your mother has had a long life, and I hope a wonderful one, full of good memories and family. I don’t have an antiaging drug. Please send the sheriff.”

“So you won’t help her. Because we don’t have enough money? Or because you are willing to let her die? Which is it?”

“I am not God—” Egg began severely but found he was talking to a dead phone. He replaced the instrument on its cradle, and immediately it began to ring. He unplugged the device and added water to the coffeemaker.

“I am not God,” he repeated aloud, although there was no one to hear. “I did not make the universe. I am not going to help change it. I am just going to live in it, and when my body wears out, die like everyone else … and hope that God has mercy on my soul.”