Caught In The Drift

Things that go sploop in the night.

Caught In The Drift

K-19’s most striking feature has always been the peculiar plasticity of its physics.

The well documented ability of its molecules to attain fluidity on the moment, and to remain mutable indefinitely, is an eye-popping fluke, perhaps unique in the universe. Everything on K-19 morphs--spontaneously, as perceived by the senses, but continuously below the visual threshold…in the planet’s depths. Habitable, yes, in a weird sort of way, but never on the radar for emigration purposes.

Yet once our world’s Skyscraper Ghettos had come crashing down, once her Oceanic Protectorates had been washed away, and once the Sterilization Wars were proven so very, very futile, previously unpalatable worlds like little K-19 began looking better every day. Earth’s runaway population, with its attendant woes of crime and congestion, contaminated sanitation systems and worsening pandemics, became the caterwauling impetus for colonization on worlds no sane person would even think of occupying.

Personal space was a luxury, food and potable water increasingly scarce. In certain cities the air itself was for sale. The soil stank, many crops were inedible. Not a day went by without the punchiest of doomsayers taking center stage. The noose was plain; mankind’s prospects were about as dire as dire can be. Radical change was in the air, the zeitgeist was for action at any cost. Around the world, student demonstrations grew ever bolder. In the West, media and constituents cranked it up, notch by notch, demanding a purge of the masses. As always, the savviest political men bent deftly with the breeze.

Yet no privation, no ordinance, no decree of god or man will ever stem the riffraff. There are decent men and women--always have been, always will be. Then there are the breeders; good for nothing but grief and crime and more breeders.

At long last a Global Police Force was universally sanctioned and armed to the teeth.

Democratic delusions belatedly hit the fan. First came the revamping of all coed institutions. After that it was the dance halls and clubs: public displays of affection were deemed obscene, insurgent, and detrimental to the Greater Picture. Religious outfits citing “fruitfulness” and “multiplying” were ordered to censor their sermons; those found in non-compliance were immediately shut down. Only single-child households, strictly monitored, were permitted in urban areas. Basic entitlements for single mothers were subject to surprise monthly visits by state-sponsored gynecologists.

Yet nobody really saw it coming.

Budget spacecraft were mass-produced by armies of conscripted workers. Ideological opposition was militarily suppressed. Nations at odds for millennia were “cooperatively united” by way of banzai thermonuclear satellite technology. Multinational conglomerates were acquired until a single GPF-enforced, international entity remained: The Consortium. Only the very wealthiest and very brightest would thereafter claim Earth as their permanent home; over the course of a hellish half-century the most heinous of breeders were smoked out, “enlisted”, and ceremoniously launched to continue pounding ’em out on their new extra-solar homes. With each triumph of social engineering The Consortium grew bolder. Grew colder. Grew absolutely intoxicated with power. The arks were like mousetraps. A trail of crumbs and baubles, a little creative enticement, and…whoosh--bye-bye predator problem! Hookers? Addicts? The debauchees, the dastards, the damned? No biggie; the arks were always ready, the cosmos always waiting. And who’s to say they didn’t have the actual problem pegged? Modern historians now sing of a model planet that was once a cesspool overflowing with jabbering messiah wannabes, with pimps and cartels, with scammers and stalkers and slackers and streakers and, well, why not export as many as possible to horizons untested? For their own good as well as the planet’s.

Just so: humans, incorrigible rabbits that we are, have this kind of ongoing explosiveness when it comes to reproduction--an instantly communicable seething lust that is blind to the seasons, to the foreseeable food supply, to even the most basic standards of tribal sanity and sexual attractiveness. In no time newly colonized worlds suffered from surplus populations of their own. But, in their own narrow way, Earth’s castoffs made a real go of it. Some places, of course, were way too bleak to encourage terraforming, too unearthly to support populating, too alien to ever become anything more than odd footnotes in the annals of man’s tentative conquest of the heavens.

Which brings us to the peculiar case of K-19.

Here a new breed of human morphs right along with every aspect of the planet. Here all animal, vegetable, and mineral structures involuntarily correspond so long as they remain within her perpetually unstable gravitational field.

Miller knew all this, had in fact written impressively on the phenomenon of real-time transformation way back in his sophomore year. Back then K-19 was the butt of many a campus joke about socially awkward freshmen; it seemed that from Day One of this weird little world’s colonization there wasn’t a physics student who didn’t contribute a description, no matter how far-fetched, of a landscape and populace conforming to nothing else in the observable universe. So Miller expected to be surprised, if not moderately boggled. But nothing could prepare him for the eeriness of the place; for the lush mauve tendrils crawling across heaving pasturage, for the nitrogenous pips that sparkled and passed, for the solitary inn that appeared to coil and loll in the aching night.

The driver allowed his car to check for comfortable spots after its sickening descent. He took his time, too, in releasing cabin pressure. He didn’t look back, nor did he make a move to get the door. The trip had been passed in icy silence. Miller realized home-reared Earthmen were just as unpopular on K-19 as on any other world. But, damn it, this was an emergency.

He stepped out and gave the driver his print. It was scanned and handed back without a look or word. “The tip,” Miller enunciated, “is included.” The driver didn’t respond. Miller knew he was understood; this entire quadrant either recognized Universal Tongue or could at the very least handle a menu in b*****d English. He slid the print back on. “Thanks again,” he said quietly. There was a long moment’s pause. The door sighed shut. The car, with the faintest shiver of protest, lifted off and began its ascent.

Miller squinted in the gloom.

Off in the distance a hillock sat up, leaned his way, fissured and died. A nearby puddle kicked and spat. The first signs of real weather. There was some kind of altercation underfoot; Miller took a few steps forward and the hubbub subsided. In that slowly settling inn a drape was pulled aside and an odd figure stared out, eclipsing the room’s shifting blushes of gradient light. The inn was the only sign of habitation for miles: Miller was certain the driver had deposited him here solely out of spite. He was also certain that several surrounding bushes were inching his way. He shouldered his case and began pussyfooting the grade, more with an eye to shoe stains than a look to defense; there had never been a report of K-19’s flora physically assaulting a stranger, not even during a storm. Yet the wild grass worried each footfall with a tugging, sucking action; frightening at first, only an annoyance by the time he reached the porch. A hinge swung side to side at his approach, a hanging shutter leaned back and groaned. Miller hesitated at the door: he’d peripherally noticed four peeing steeds off to his right, mailed against the weather. They were just like the indigenous creatures he’d studied remotely so long ago; fascinating then, repulsive now--enormously fat, sprawling, disgusting slugs that wax dynamic at their riders’ commands. Two lowed at his intrusion; a curious shrub replied.

He knocked. And knocked again. After an interminable half-minute he began pounding away. The old door crabbily creaked open. Miller found himself staring across a dilapidated lobby at a hunched gray innkeeper in a state of constant flux. A number of utensils clattered uncertainly on the countertop. The innkeeper quickly looked away, his hairline receding and advancing. Miller walked casually to the desk and unshouldered his case. A small group seated against the far wall, evidently the steeds’ owners, looked on intently.

“I’ll need a room for the night, at least. Our galleon was disabled in a drift pocket and I was one of the last men off. I had to retrieve some drives.” He raised his voice as he brandished the long cylindrical case. “They’re important drives. The rescue ship was full. The Consortium’s sending a personal vessel that’ll arrive tomorrow night at the latest.” Miller emphatically cleared his throat.

“No rooms available,” the innkeeper mumbled. “The place is closed.”

“Closed?” Miller blinked. “I just told you there was an accident in the drift. I’m stuck here. I’ve a graph that says all of K-19’s right on the cusp of a major storm. The Consortium will cover my print. Where’s your ledger?”

“No need,” the innkeeper muttered. “All rooms taken.”

“Taken!” It was the crack of a whip. With barely contained venom Miller said, “Then I’ll sleep in the lobby if I have to. But be absolutely clear that the Consortium will hear all about this.”

The innkeeper shrank further. From the seated group came a cold drawl: “Lobby’s taken too.”

Miller’s face burned to the side. Two of the men stood. Another voice called out, “And he said the inn’s closed!”

Now a young iridescent moon broke from behind a peak miles off, recasting the floor’s shadows. Miller stamped on two and the rest fled into the woodwork. His expression twisted round. “Do you know who I am?”

“No. But we know where you’re from.”

A pantry door swung open and an old woman oozed into the lobby. “What’s all this brouhaha?”

“You!” Miller demanded. “Do you work here?”

The woman froze. She looked him over: clothes, posture, expression, her eyes resting longest on his case’s blazing Consortium logo. Miller could tell she was bristling by the sudden spikes under her cloak at the shoulders. To his ongoing disbelief she folded her arms and said, “The building is closed.”

Miller took two broad steps forward and pointed out the open door. “Do you see that world out there? There’s a real storm brewing.” He turned around, took the two broad steps back and rapped smartly on the desk. “I’ve never heard of a rooming race turning away a traveler in distress. What’s wrong with you people?”

The whole place appeared to tilt. Outside, a pair of shrubs fell about, caught up in a death struggle that ended as quickly as it began. The wind moaned from the marrow. The old woman said, “Come here.”

After a respectable pause Miller followed her out to the porch. When they were out of earshot he said matter-of-factly, “Okay, lady. How much?”

Her head jerked back as though she’d been slapped. “You…” she said, “you!” Brief skin tags ran up and down her throat, raced shoulder to shoulder under her cloak.

Miller turned away, listening to the steeds splashing about in their own waste. He should never have gone back for the drives. They were replaceable. The Consortium wouldn’t have blamed him for being swallowed up in the off-ship rush. It’s just that his reaction had been so pedestrian. Hindsight is such a pointless quality. His fantasy scenarios of a promotion and raise were already growing stale.

The woman’s voice was small in the night. “There’s another inn not far from here, just down the road over the hill.”

That cut. No apology, no clarification. There was a real undercurrent of insolence in this planet’s every fiber. Miller’s eyes followed the dark creepy road to its summit, maybe a quarter-mile distant. “Let me guess. Also ‘full’?”

“If they say so.”

He carefully set down his case. “Y’know what, ma’am? Maybe I’ll just get comfy on your snazzy ol’ porch here. You don’t think that’ll bring your property value down too far, do you? Y’know what else? I’ve a good mind to record every detail of this sorry reception.” He showed her an erect forefinger, ticking it side to side at each point made. “The initial non-response--I know my cab’s file was transmitted, and I saw you, or one of you, looking out that window on my arrival…the refusal to accommodate, the overall lack of courtesy--so help me, lady, don’t you ever think this little travesty’s going unreported. And it’s customary, if not mandatory, to address your VIP lodgers as ‘sir’.”

“You’re not a lodger until you’re signed in.”

“Show me the ledger.”

“The building is closed.”

A harsh laugh blew out the open door. Miller fumed.

She shifted closer, her face buckling and swelling. “Please listen to me, sir. You can’t stay outside in a storm, not even on the porch. You won’t last.”

“What do you mean: ‘won’t last’? Maybe you should show Earthmen their due respect, huh?” He blew out a lungful of stress. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you take an honest look at this little backwater planet of yours.” Again he ticked off points with his forefinger. “Your propellants are notoriously unstable. Your ‘durable’ goods have preposterously fickle shelf-lives. No one will navigate anywhere near your gravitational field without first closing his eyes and crossing his fingers.” Miller quickly touched his left ear. He’d had the oddest impression of the lobe being gnawed. “Case in point: my marooned galleon and this little unscheduled vacation.” He placed his hands on his hips and swiveled his head, marveling. “Say, just when is peak tourist season around here, anyway?” The old lady’s eyelids crimped. “Y’know…” Miller concluded, “if not for The Consortium’s sense of progressive fair play, this entire place would’ve just shaken and shimmied into oblivion long ago.”

The woman’s eyes became smoke-veiled embers, her voice a sandpaper hiss.

“You’re from Earth; you don’t understand. Products, capital gain, your precious Consortium--we’re not interested in all that. Blasphemy, I know. Still, we’re very sorry your ship was caught in the drift. We sincerely hope you’ll find something nice to say about us when you get back home. But please don’t start any trouble here.”

“ʻSomething nice’? You’ve just got to be kidding. Listen here, woman. I could buy you and those impudent bigmouths in there with one swipe of my pinkie. You should be glad I’m temporarily stranded and not on some routine inspection. And we don’t start trouble, we finish it, okay?”

“Sir!” Her wattles arched and subsided. “Here you are no longer under the protection of your mighty Consortium! Here humanity is a collective shield, and narcissism a man’s demise. Every particle of this world knows who you are and what you stand for. And once you leave these premises you are truly on your own. There is not a molecule out there that won’t own you.”

“Cliches and platitudes,” Miller parried. “Sticks and stones. The Consortium doesn’t bend to extra-solar ideology. All this weeping, whining, and moaning…instead of complaining all the time, why don’t you try filling out an official grievance? Learn to organize a committee. Show a little civic pride. If any of you people have a problem with the way we run things you can always take it up with a caseworker.”

A single gnarly appendage grew out of her sleeve and slowly extended, pointing eastward.

“Over the hill,” she said icily.

“And godspeed to you.” Miller looped his case’s strap over his head and began to hike.

The old lady watched him recede, her body readjusting to the landscape molecule for molecule. St. Elmo’s fire lit her cloak’s peaked hood.

Miller’s eyes swam and steadied, sizzled and froze. The storm was picking up. Whorls in the wind curtsied, a trio of pebbles hopscotched the road. When he looked back again the woman was gone. Maybe he was better off with a lesson learned well. If the grotesqueries at the next inn were anything like these last ingrates, a little tact might go a long way. It couldn’t hang more than a night, anyway. He’d just fall out in his room and sleep right through it. A pocket of air sighed and exploded overhead. He picked up his pace.

In a while a peculiar sound rose back at the inn; a restless, banshee-like wailing.

Miller stopped, trying to put his finger on it. Haunted K-19 imagery jostled his memory…broad ugly shapes reeling in the mist…armed riders on enormous slavering beasts… rearing shadows, lurching side to side. Then a miscellaneous audio file, back in college…yes, it all meshed: the steeds had been roused.

The ruckus spiked as they rounded the intervening inn.

It was a struggle to make any headway at all; the road had an odd disposition that made forward movement like walking in place. The steeds’ compound wail began phasing in and out, swirling and nearing.

Miller really put his back and heart into it, his ears popping, his eyes bulging…but he had to be marching backward somehow--no, it was the road: the road itself was flowing downhill. Miller cried out as first his left ankle, then his right, was gobbled up in grit and freed. He fell on his palms, felt his wrists gripped by a force unseen. Only by rolling onto his back was he able to work himself free. He sprinted uphill.

The wailing intensified. He shot back a glance, saw four surreal shapes charging uphill in tandem.

At the road’s summit Miller fell to his knees for lack of air and options--it was all bogs and gnarly banyan-like trees. The road proper descended into a wriggling wilderness, woody to the left and swampy to the right; very alive, but not a sign of habitation, not a trace of civilization. The old witch had been lying all along! Miller stamped at the horror and betrayal. He cursed the whole reeking planet and all its mindless insubordinate occupants, and was answered in seconds by a howling quartet.

That did it. Miller lost it completely.

He blew out his mind in a sudden tumble of babbling stones, ran stumbling off the road into a sour, clingy wetland. Mustered by his cries, sulking columns of mist swept in from all sides. Obscene things ran yipping through the shadows, leapt twitching in the vapors, hopped flopping pool to pool. He clung to a snapping curtain of fronds and peered back.

The steeds were rearing at the road’s summit, looking like immense thrashing maggots against the lightning-salted sky. They began howling madly at Miller’s point of ingress. As their riders dug in their spurs the things came barreling down the grade with that peculiar lurching motion found only in limbless creatures.

Miller desperately waded downstream, knee-deep in swirling murk. He veered into the first inlet he encountered, using his case as a machete to hack through a wiggly tunnel of ravening foliage, brushing off shooting needles and blades with his free hand, whacking at looming clusters with the case. He smashed his way right into a dead end: the little inlet was clogged by a dark, moldering alcove crammed full of hypnotically heaving feelers. A rolling carpet of fetid fungal caps gently urged him on.

Where the weeds hit the wetland those overhanging fronds grappled and snapped furiously. The pack paused halfway, smothered in fronds, allowing Miller’s scent to snag in their billowing pores. Though he must have been fifty yards away, he could feel his own follicles throbbing in response.

The steeds went right into immersion mode, flattening and stretching, extending their retractable heads and dragging their bellies through the sediment while rhythmically snaking side to side, their moody pink eyes rolling under green-veined lids. Beneath the brooding canopy inevitable contacts brought about inevitable scraps: the beasts would whip about and snap viciously until their cursing riders prodded them back into formation. The things would thereupon stretch to their utmost, snorting and hissing through their dorsal nasal buds while lowering themselves inch by inch into the roiling stream. Upon full submergence they took on an odd combination of serpentine and rectilinear motions, humping like breaching whales before falling into a seesawing sweep. They snuffled as they swam, but didn’t exhale into the sickly air; rather, they discharged twin streams of wobbly bubbles that snagged on their flanks.

Miller carefully backed into the groping recess. Feelers ran over his shoulders and thighs, making for the warm pace of his heart. He was disgusted, he was revolted, he was enraged; he began kicking and swinging in a panicky attempt to tear himself free. The only things louder than his flailing were the slobbering horrors now splashing into view.

Miller willed himself absolutely still.

The splashing ceased.

Four heads extended as one, four mouths foamed over. Through some kind of symbiotic psychic exchange the riders turned with their brutes, well attuned to their every predatory inclination. All eyes lit in the dark.

The lead rider urged his steed toward Miller’s alcove; the others eagerly took up the rear. The whole line awkwardly plodded forward, arched backs demolishing the overhead foliage, bellies walloping the water. When the lead slug was almost on top of him it slowly submerged, elongating to give its rider a better view. The darkness was infused with an eerie silence. For half a minute the whole place froze. A fat ripple worked its way to Miller’s kneecaps, burst stinking and dissolved. A spotted vine whipped about furiously as a tiny flock of bogbabies flew off screaming through the leaves. Again the water grew still, again the morbid silence closed in. A dripping behemoth slowly rose out of the water and began sniffing between trees. Miller could see its rider’s eyes shifting side to side.

It was one thing to study these monsters from afar, quite another to look one right in the face--that “face” being a sallow jawless mask peppered with scent-sensitive villi-like projections. True to its fluid K-19 morphology, the leader’s steed was toggling in real time, from lungs to gills and back again. Miller shuddered: the whole fright-hole of its sucker-fringed mouth was surrounded by huffing gills slurping in syncopated time with sniffing anterior dorsal lobes. On either side of its “forehead” a lax pink orb swam dreamily, almost poetically, aligning instantly at each intriguing scent. Miller very, very gently closed his eyes.

The lead rider whispered musically, “Oh, Mr. Consortium?” Miller recognized his voice from the inn. “Are you in there, Mr. Consortium?” His steed shivered in response. “Why don’t you come on out and hop aboard? We got a special room waiting just for you.” His buddies laughed behind him. “Hey!” he called. “Mr. Consortium!”

The steeds nuzzled in as one, wholly caught up. The riders began calling in unison: “Mr. C! Mr. C! Mr. C!” At each repeated chant the steeds champed and tossed wildly.

The leader threw up a hand and the pack grudgingly quieted.

He leaned in, squinting. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t like us, Mr. Consortium?” He brooded left and right, his steed’s posterior slowly rolling back and forth in botched sync with the movements. “Is it that we don’t live up to the lofty standards of your great big gated community ‘back home’? Is it that our grandfolks still tell us tales that don’t quite match your imported regal records? Well, maybe we’re just too damned worn out to kowtow with proper enthusiasm, okay? Maybe we’ve been stretched and squished so relentlessly we’re no longer all that quick to our knees.” He made a frame of his hands and peeked through. “But y’know, Mr. Consortium, nature always finds a way to square things. Even on this screwy little planet there’s comeuppance.” He dropped his arms. “Wink, wink, Mr. Consortium. Catch and release.”

“Mr. C!” his pals chanted. “Mr. C! Mr. C! Mr. C!” The leader humored them by playing air maestro, waving his arms back and forth rhythmically. On a sudden downbeat he stopped dead.

“Back!” he cried, tugging hard on the rein while murderously jabbing his steed in the side. The thing rose half out of the water, roaring and spraying. Then all four steeds were squirming in reverse, smashing the inlet to pieces. It was all just too tight, just too confined. The rearmost steeds turned on one another, a free-for-all face to butt and flank to flank. With a bloodcurdling shriek the lead steed whipped about, almost throwing its rider--an identical nightmare had leapt hard on its rear. In seconds all four were viciously brawling; gnashing, thrashing, wildly splashing. Their riders finally managed to whip and jab them all the way out and back into stalking formation. The leader stared meaningfully at the alcove as he charged his boys, calling: “Go, damn you, just go!” The whole nasty armada continued squabbling downstream.

Miller very cautiously exhaled. Fernfairies crawled up his sleeves, mirewebs gently settled on every exposed part of his person. The webs lobbed their gossamer tendrils over his face and hands, creating seams wherever blood vessels sang closest to the surface. The fairies found warm crevices and hived. Miller’s feelers clambered and clung. Presently the sounds of butting and splashing grew small in the distance.

Miller’s case nipped him.

At first the notion was so unreal he could only gape at his jacking shoulder. Next thing he knew the case was making its way down his arm in one long peristaltic shudder. He flung it off with a piercing cry, blood droplets swimming in his breath, his fingernails splitting blue. The case flopped off in one direction, Miller in another.

A feverish commotion erupted downstream. In seconds the pack was on its way back.

Miller splashed screaming through the fronds, ran back up to the road and over the hill into drier country. He hobbled stump to stump, shrub to shrub, keeping low to the ground. The sounds of pursuit burst out into the open and continued to the road’s summit, then back in the direction of the inn.

Miller pressed through the underbrush with a turned ankle and bruised hip, seeking cover in the trees. Something flapped wildly in his hair. As he beat at his scalp a screeching winged shadow shot straight up a hundred feet and disintegrated pyrotechnically, rearranging its fragments into the shape of a cloaked and hooded figure with downward-pointing sleeve. From this sleeve projected the luminous outline of an accusing forefinger that followed Miller wherever he turned. The display was incandescent, and must have been visible for miles. Soon the steeds could be heard flopping back up the road. A second pointing figure joined the first, then a third.

Miller staggered through the woods until he could stagger no farther. Some kind of olifant sounded just ahead. He slammed his back against a tree and gaped up at the quartet of riders watching from a rolling knoll. As their heads simultaneously inclined a strong pair of limbs clutched his biceps from behind.

The tree hauled him up kicking and screaming. When he was at eye-level with the riders a second pair of limbs branched from the trunk; one to brace and impel his spine, the other to hold him by the throat.

Miller struggled for air, clinging to the steely limbs while his body jerked to and fro.

“You freaks!” he coughed. “Get me down!” The riders looked on silently. Miller forced a savage breath. “I’ll see you burn! I’ll see your whole stupid planet blacklisted, quarantined…shut down.” He was fading. The upper limb lifted him forward until he dangled, suspended midway between the trunk and the observers. “The Consortium won’t tolerate any of your damned…we’ll get you for…” One of Miller’s eyebrows detached, his left arm seized, teeth and bits of flesh spewed out before him. “Won’t take this…” he choked. “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything.” His face went plum, the eyes bulged and raved, the ears folded, the scalp peeled off in layers. “I’m sorry…please…please…” His head fell forward. “Mercy,” he whispered. “Oh, please.”

A stalagmite-shaped bulge, breaking through the earth beneath his feet, strained upward between bursting pockets of gas. The tree’s uppermost branch shook Miller hard; an alley dog thrashing a roof rat. A long shudder ran down the branch and the tree turned to stone.

Immediately the bulge rushed up, clasped Miller’s feet and tugged. A heaving miasma appeared around his stretched and dangling remains. Putrefaction began at once.

The lightening eastern sky was turning in a breathtaking cotton-candy spiral. The storm was winding down. The four riders turned their steeds and began the lazy slog back to the inn.

It was going to be a beautiful day.