Traveler in the Dark

48

Liu had gone and Blick's music had moved on to an old Cosmix dance hit. She could hear Emery humming softly through the feed. Alice twisted in her seat, trying to break free and groaning in pain. "You should take it out, Beatrice," Blick muttered. "Liu's right. I'll try and do it myself, if you won't."

"She slaughtered most of our colleagues. You didn't see Chione. It wasn't a painless death. She doesn't deserve an ounce of mercy."

"She's mad," he whispered, as if it mattered. "She doesn't know what she's doing."

Martham shook her head. "She does. She knows. She thinks she's protecting the planet from the terrible humans. Or the humans from the terrible planet. I'm not sure. That part wasn't really clear. But she knows she's killing us."

"Look, if you won't do it for her, at least have pity on me. I can't stand listening to her in pain. It's not right."

"Okay," she said. "For your sake, then." She looked around for the surviving medkit.

"Thank you," sighed Blick. Martham watched as he reached a hand up to his wound to probe it.

"I should change your bandages."

"No, take care of Oxwell first. I can change them."

"You aren't looking well," said Martham.

"Yeah well, been kicking around the galaxy for sixty years now. I guess I'll make it through another day or two. Probably just an allergic reaction to that rodent's quills. If it were going to, it would have killed me by now."

"Unless it's an infection."

Blick closed his eyes and nodded. "Well, we still have Oxwell. Maybe she'll find an effective antibiotic."

"There's no antibiotic," groaned Alice. "The planet doesn't want us. It's fighting us off."

"The planet didn't murder Al Jahi or Leroux or the others," snapped Martham even as she disinfected her hands, "You did that all on your own. Slaughtered good people for no reason."

Emery's voice was anguished over the feed. "She did it then? I was too late. Why, Alice? Why do you think this is the only way?"

"It's my job to find a cure for organisms so bent on breeding and consuming that they destroy their host. Other lifeforms find their limits. They stay at sustainable levels. Not us. We kill our host planet, wring it dry and then move on. We're that organism. I'm the cure. Ask your friend. It knows. It did the same thing for its people."

"I did not, Oxwell. My people are not destroyed. Their data is not dispersed. They continue within me."

"Yes, well we don't have that luxury. If you hadn't existed when your people swarmed, what would have happened?"

Martham shook her head and selected some tools from the med kit. "They would have overcome or they would have died," she said. "Look up from your microscope once in a while. This is one thing Emery and I can agree on. We overcame. We adapted. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why other animals stop breeding once they reach carrying capacity?"

"Because they have no alternative," said Blick, "Once they go over that level, they starve or communicate diseases and die off until they reach sustainable levels again."

"We didn't," snarled Alice, "we just kept going."

"Because we could," said Martham. "A cow can't grow its fodder. It can't increase yield by purposely breeding hardier grain. It can't irrigate its land. It can't cut forest to make more farms or develop pesticides to protect its crop. It doesn't create vaccines and antibiotics to cure cow plagues."