On The Surface Tension Read online

  “So I am going to enter your name in the system as Carla 23. I am going to list your blood test as ‘negative.’ I am going to assign you to a job of ‘Pharmaceutical Technician.’ When you get down to the planet surface and see the others being herded into a line for assignments, do not get in the line. Go to the second line, the one that is handing out the little electronic devices. When they tell you to put your thumb on the thumb pad, do it in such a way that the middle of your thumb does not come in contact with the hole in the middle: That is where a little needle would pop out and inject you with the drug. Don’t let it stick you, but do whatever you have to do to make them think you did! Then walk towards the nearest large double doors and tell any security guard that you have already been assigned. Show them the form that I will print out for you. Are you with me so far?”

  The brown haired girl nodded, nervously.

  “You can’t be afraid. You have to act like all the other people around you: dull, happy, and stupid. Can you do that?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Good. Then you have to follow the directions on your form to your living room. It may be difficult for you, since you are probably not used to the architecture. But I don’t have time to explain that to you. Then at seven o’clock, you have to be at the other address I am going to print out for you, on a different little paper. That is where our group will meet you and give you more instructions and help. If you are caught, do not give them that address. Eat it if you have to. Do you understand, Carla 23?”

  The girl nodded once again.

  “Good. Because if you fail, we both die, along with my friends.”

  Elanor printed out a form and handed it to the girl, along with a smaller piece of paper with her cell’s address.

  “Thank you,” the girl whispered, and went to join the others who had been processed in the shuttle.

  “Next,” Elanor called to the guards, and they brought another of the captives to her for processing. She resisted the urge to do the same thing for this young man. Out of the hundreds, the thousands that she had processed in this way, this was the only time she had risked herself for one.

  What have I done? She began casting about for reasons to give her cell members, but none would come.

  She busied herself processing the rest of the new captives, then joined the other workers on the shuttle back to Cambria’s main human city, the City of God.

  One of her coworkers, a young man who Elanor imagined had designs on her, greeted her in the usual drug-induced haze.

  “Hello Elanor 32!” he said brightly.

  “I feel ’ya, Jurgen 18!” she replied cheerfully.

  “Eiffelia too!” he replied. “You wanna come over and watch TV with me tonight? Super Jumbo Penises is on!”

  “No thanks, Jurgen, I’m busy meeting with someone else,” she said. He looked mildly disappointed, but seconds later his eyes drifted off into the drug-induced haze again.

  The shuttle undocked from the big Cruiser and dropped back into the planet’s atmosphere. After the fiery reentry, the antigrav engines kicked in, and they glided into one of the large spherical landing bays of the city.

  Walking into the City of God, it occurred to Elanor that she should have given the new girl more instructions for navigating there. It was not constructed with human beings in mind, apparently, but through the mind of a sponge. It was as though an enormous slag of melted plastic had been suddenly cooled, with large and small gas bubbles freezing into roughly spherical chambers, which were then connected with a warren of roundish tubes of various sizes. After she learned the truth about Eiffelia, she recognized it for what it was: a larger-scaled representation of the structure of a sponge.

  Elanor checked her PC for the time and realized she would have to hurry to make it to the weekly meeting of her cell. She would have to do the best she could to prepare them for the newly invited member and risk their wrath.

  She made her way through the warren of tunnels as quickly as she could without appearing to hurry. When she neared the turnoff to their meeting room, she made sure that nobody was in the curving tunnel to see her, then ducked suddenly down the side passage to the meeting room. The standing plan was that if anyone stumbled upon the meetings, they would act as though it was a prayer group.

  Rosa 40 was already there, huddled in the back of the oval shaped chamber with protrusions from the wall that they used as seats. She was a pleasant and handsome woman who worked as a medical technician.

  Elanor took a seat opposite her without saying a word, and they waited for the others.

  Cain 10 was the next to arrive. He was an angular man with hollow eyes, a former soldier, who now worked with explosives at the weapons manufacturing plant. He took another seat and nodded to them both in greeting.

  Elanor wondered when Chris Springs would show up and what she would say to them all, especially Anton 36, the self-styled leader of the group.

  Valentina 69 arrived next. She was a beautiful blonde woman, their celebrity, who had her own porn show. They hoped that once the revolution was launched, she could use her ties in the media to transmit the message to the newly freed populace.

  Anton came shortly thereafter and glanced around quickly.

  “It looks like we’re all here,” he said, sitting down with a loud exhalation. “Let’s get started.”

  “Actually, we’re not all here,” Elanor said quietly. “I just recruited someone else.”

  There was shocked silence.

  “What do you mean, you recruited someone else?” hissed Anton. “Who said you could do that?”

  “Nobody said I could,” Elanor retorted. “And nobody said I couldn’t either. You are always saying how we have no official leaders; nobody is higher ranked than anyone else around here. I had an opportunity and made a call.”

  They all looked at her with suspicion, shock, and anger. She met their gazes. Even though Anton said repeatedly that he was not the official leader, it was unspoken that he was.

  “Who is it?” asked Cain.

  “A girl. Fresh from the off-world shuttle. I caught her before she could be drugged up with Xylol, so there won’t be any problems like we had with detoxing. And there’s no way she could be a spy. We need a backup plan to our current one, or maybe an extra wrinkle to it. I assigned her to work as a Pharmacy Tech right at the Xylol plant.”

  Elanor watched as this information worked through the minds of her group.

  It was then that Chris Springs appeared in the doorway, looking scared and lost.

  “Sit down, Carla 23,” said Elanor.

  “It’s Chris, really,” she said feebly.

  “Not anymore,” said Anton, once again trying to regain the mantle of leadership. “Your name is now Carla 23. Mine is Anton 36. I’m a Shuttle Pilot. This is Valentina 69, Rosa 40, and Cain 10. We call ourselves the Virii. We are little viruses living in the body of Eiffelia, without her knowledge, and hope to make her very sick someday. And you are going to help us.”

  “Do you understand the danger we are all in?” asked Rosa quietly from the corner.

  “I looked and listened to people on the way here,” answered Chris. “They all seem dead, drugged, empty.”

  “Exactly,” said Valentina. “We were lucky enough to have some natural resistance to the drug that Eiffelia uses to control us. One of us, Anton, managed to stop taking it but acted like he still was. He was able to get into the computers and find us. Because we had more natural resistance, he looked for people who were getting massive doses to keep us in the same state as others. With me, he just watched my show and could tell. One by one, he was able to help us by asking us to join his prayer group, then showing us how to avoid the thumb sticks where the drug is administered. Now we just act like we’re drugged, like everyone else.”

  “Now we’re trying to free all of us from her drugs,” added Anton. “We are a planet full of slaves who don’t even know they are.”

  “If we are discovered, we’ll be killed,�
�� added Rosa. That was enough for Chris.

  “Ok, look,” she said, holding up her palms. “I wish you the best and all, but this is not my fight. I’m sure you guys are in a worthy crusade and all, but I’m sorry, I just want to find my brother and go home.”

  The conspirators glanced between themselves, and it occurred to Elanor that they were considering killing the newcomer to prevent her revealing them.

  “Carla….Chris, wait,” she said. “Maybe we can help each other. There is no way you can find your brother on your own. I work in personnel assignments. I might be able to find him. You help us, we help you.”

  Chris’ eyes narrowed. She considered her options.

  “What is the plan?” she asked.

  “That’s just it,” said Anton, “we haven’t settled on a final version yet.”

  “That’s because every scenario we have come up with, some combination of Anton flying a shuttle with explosives stolen by Cain into the orbiting drug factory, involves us dying at the end,” said Valentina with pursed lips.

  “We’ve never had anyone on the inside, actually in the manufacturing facility, until now,” Elanor said excitedly. “She can destroy the process from the inside. Sabotage. Maybe without explosives, even, so the process can be rendered harmless while making it look like a manufacturing failure. Then we get you out of there on Anton’s shuttle, while the harmless drug gets shipped out and fails to drug the populace. Valentina then gets the word out on the TV.”

  “And you find my brother and get us back to our home planet,” nodded Chris. “I guess we have a deal then.”

  “So for now,” Elanor continued, “you just get started on your new job and learn all you can about it. I’ll get on the computers and try to find your brother. The rest of us stand by and keep from getting caught, and work on the plans for what to do after the populace stops being drugged and wakes up.”

  She glanced around the group and was gratified that not one of them confessed that Anton’s shuttle was not fitted with a rift generator, so was incapable of travel to Chris’s home world. They would tell Chris about that and the fact that her brother was probably already dead after humanity was freed from their bondage.

  We all have our sacrifices, she thought.

  *****

  Had Jeremy Springs not started his day on Earth with a reasonably good chance of engaging in sexual congress with a bikini-clad girl then been abducted by men on flying snowmobiles and taken across space to an alien world, when he saw what was coming out of the tree line he would have stood rooted in disbelieving incomprehension. As it was, he turned and ran with the other seven guys.

  Lumbering out of the trees were three giant black scorpions. Their bodies were the size of coffee tables, their legs stretched out the width of a truck, and their tails towered over Jeremy’s head. Their claws were like chainsaws. The scorpions started to pursue them, black legs scuttling and stabbing into the soft sand.

  Within seconds he and the other seven newcomers had blown past the five wild men and were pelting as fast as they could down the beach. The group of five wild men laughed uproariously.

  “You better pace yourselves,” they hooted after the panicked group of newcomers. Jeremy fought against his instinct to run and slowed his pace like the experienced wild men, as did a few of the new group. The rest sprinted on.

  “How long do we run?” Jeremy panted, glad that he had just completed weeks of Marine basic training.

  The wild men did not appear in any hurry to engage in conversation. They chugged along at a slow jog, barely gaining distance from the pursuing scorpions. Before long, they came across the other seven newcomers, sitting in the hot sand gasping for breath in the heat. When the slower-paced group passed them, they staggered to their feet again and struggled to keep up. One of them, Jeremy noted with a pang of indecision, was hefty and obviously out of shape. He only ran a little while before collapsing in the sand, clutching his calf.

  “Help me!” he wailed, eyes white-rimmed with panic.

  Jeremy stopped and turned back, but one of the wild men called over his shoulder, “You can’t help him. If you try, neither of you will make it.”

  Jeremy looked at the steadily approaching giant scorpions and realized that the wild man was right. He considered trying to distract the scorpions away from the fallen man but knew that the beasts would fixate on the sure meat. He started jogging backwards.

  “Get up!” he bellowed. “You can do this! Just pace yourself!”

  The overweight newcomer was frozen with fear and could only stare at the approaching monsters. Within seconds they were upon him. Jeremy turned away, head bowed, when the screaming started in earnest.

  He walked straight into the chest of one of the wild men. They stood in a loose group, panting softly.

  “That is when you can stop running,” the tallest one said.

  Jeremy regarded him coldly.

  “But if everyone can remember to move just faster than them without wearing themselves out, then you just put enough distance between them and you so that when you duck back into the woods you can get out of their sight down one of the side paths so that they quit following you. Until the next one spots you, that is.”

  The other newcomers were gasping for breath, staring back towards the unfortunate victim who was being loudly devoured. One of them vomited.

  “Why don’t you fight them? Kill them? We’re human fucking beings,” Jeremy accused.

  “Oh, we’ve tried it,” said the tall wild man, starting back towards the woods in a more leisurely pace. “Nothing gets past those hard shells.”

  “Bullshit,” said Jeremy, following him. “What about spears? Clubs?”?

  “No metal. No hard wood, even. We just have pithy plants and palm trees. We’ve tried shells, coral…shit, even the rocks at the cliff are crumbly.” The rest of the remaining newcomers tagged along a few paces behind them, while the four other hairy veterans scattered towards the forest at different entry points.

  Jeremy considered the tall wild man carefully. The man was talking to him for the time being, and he decided to wring as much information out of him that he could before the man got frustrated, bored, or threatened by his greenhornery. He thought it best to pander to the man’s sense of expertise.

  “What is your name?” Jeremy asked.

  “It doesn’t matter here,” the man answered, “but you can call me Ang 10.”

  “You must be a surfer,” Jeremy joked. The man regarded him incomprehensibly.

  “I learned not to get too familiar with newcomers like you,” Ang said with a sneer. “Most of you are gone by the next morning.”

  “Well, Ang 10 my new friend, I’m not going to get eaten, if I can help it. Why don’t you let me know what I need to know to avoid that?

  Ang started jogging again towards the woods that lay beyond the wide swath of beach. The other newcomers groaned and ran along behind. Jeremy was able to keep up easily, thanks to his training. The rest were not.

  Ang jogged down the maze of sandy trails between the brush, seeming to keep watch for scorpions. Occasionally he stooped to pick up various fruit that had fallen to the ground from various bushes. Jeremy copied him.

  “Not the green ones,” Ang muttered, “they give you bellyache and the runs, and the bugs have an easy time chasing you down.”

  Jeremy dropped the green one.

  By this time, the other newcomers had dropped off, one by one, to seek their own way in the maze of paths. Occasionally, they ran across another scorpion, but Jeremy learned from Ang that one merely needed to dash off down a different path before the scorpion got too close.

  There were streams for water. “Drink fast and keep looking around, the bugs use the creeks for ambushes,” Ang instructed.

  Jeremy sensed mid-afternoon that Ang was growing impatient with his presence.

  “Hey, thanks for letting me tag along for a while,” he said during a pause in their relentless movement. “Is there anything else imp
ortant to know before we part ways?”

  Ang rubbed his stubbled chin with a grubby hand, eyes constantly roving.

  “At night, hole up in the middle of the biggest thorn bush you can find. If you hear them trying to get at you, make a break from the other side if you think they can reach you. Make sure you can get out of the bushes from several directions or they’ll box you in there and wait you out. They can live a lot longer without food and water than we can.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Thanks, man.”

  Ang trotted away. “And stay away from the Treehouse people—

  they’ll eat you too,” he called over his shoulder before he disappeared around a bend.

  “What? Treehouse people?” Jeremy called after him, but he was gone.

  For the second time that day, Jeremy was struck with the realization that he was on an alien world. This time, however, he was also aware that they were just the latest crop of victims for feeding the giant scorpions, like a mouse dropped into a snake cage. He was expected to be eaten before long, unless he ended up like the wild men, forever running for his life.

  He stood regarding the sandy path through the woods before him, and a wave of depression passed over him.

  “I’m going to die,” he thought. He mulled that thought over and over, growing more despairing. “I’m in the valley of the shadow now.”

  He imagined a giant scorpion down the path from him, coming his way. He toyed with the idea of just letting it eat him, to get it over with.

  “Hell with that,” he thought. “I have to get back to wherever Chris is and get us out of this place.”

  He steeled his resolve and strode off down the path.

  Before long, he found out what Ang 10 was talking about when he mentioned the “Treehouse people.”

  He saw a woman, in rags with long bird’s-nest hair, collecting fruit. What really caught Jeremy’s eye, however, was that she was carrying a basket, woven of sticks with some kind of natural cordage. She saw him, hesitated for a moment, then fled.

  Jeremy gave chase. He wanted the cordage on that basket. Cordage meant tools, which meant weapons.