Do No Harm Read online

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the three years after his rescue, Todd became fully integrated into the community growing around his pond in the Styx River delta. He now had a channel to the brackish water of the estuary. The combination of river water diluting the saltwater of the seas, and the tidal flow diluting the sulfur and minerals of the river meant Todd could move freely through the nearby waters. It was not completely comfortable at first, but it became much more tolerable as time went on, and he discovered more information about his own body.

  Knowing the name of his race did not help much at first. There was still no information in the AetherNet—the Human successor to Earth’s pre-First Contact Internet—or the portions of the GalNet—the considerably more sophisticated Union database—the colony could access. A merc ship in-system to replenish He3 at the system’s sole gas giant had provided a bit more information. Then Todd used some of his credits to purchase a GalNet update from the Cartography Guild gate master at the stargate.

  He learned his was a long-lived race, with individual lifespans of over one thousand years. They made extensive use of bioengineering to modify their own bodies, including the use of nanites to create brain-to-computer interfaces—or BCIs as the Humans called them. The Galactics called them pinplants and it was these that had allowed Todd to access vital information at the shuttle crash and gave him access to translators and comms.

  Over the years, Todd was also busy working with Bailey to bioengineer solutions for the ocean farming rafts, and with Cavanaugh at various biochemical ventures around the growing Styx Town. Those ventures mostly had to do with brewing and distilling, but not all of them were alcoholic. They were also at the heart of new developments for the colony. After repaying the colony a salvage fee for his rescue and upkeep, Todd had started to provide credits to assist some of the other colony efforts in manufacturing and industry. Governor Cynthia Bailey called it investing, and told Todd he was becoming the major benefactor of the colony.

  Credits invested turned into credits earned, and merc ships began to stop in-system for resupply and provisioning as well as refueling at Ruby, the system’s lone gas giant. Todd understood he was contributing to his adopted world, and he had no particular desire to go out in the galaxy to find more of his own kind.

  In fact, he found he experienced unease whenever he studied the meager information about the Wrogul. He knew they were cephalopods, though quite distinct from the Earth species of octopus and squid. For one thing, he had both arms with suckers for grip and “taste” like octopi, but also sensory tentacles like squid, but without the hooked barbs squid possessed on both arms and tentacles.

  No Earth creature could duplicate the technique that allowed him to reach through skin and bone with his tentacles. Despite the fact a new doctor had arrived from Earth the previous year, Todd was still the surgeon of first resort when the colonists at Styx or the farming rafts were injured.

  That also meant Todd vacated his tank beside the Styx River much more frequently. As he and Bailey worked on the problem of the red tide, it was necessary for them to travel to the farming rafts so they could take samples and check on problems.

  It also meant they had to solve the problem of mobility for a nearly two-meter-long cephalopod and the five-hundred liters of water it needed for all but short trips over land. They soon discovered Todd could tolerate about an hour in the air, double that if there was a way to keep his skin wet. He could also pull himself along the ground by exerting leverage with his arms. He couldn’t manage anything like walking, but with eight arms to reach and pull, he could keep up with a Human walking slowly…very slowly. On the other hand, give him overhead rungs and poles, and he could locomotivate almost as fast as a Human could run.

  The mobile water tank problem was solved using an autonomous pallet lifter from the starport. The small, tracked platform had a low, flat top just the right dimensions to hold a five hundred- to one thousand-liter klearplas aquarium. It also had a weight capacity of five metric tons, so a mere five hundred kilograms of water was not a problem for the device. Cavanaugh equipped one such platform with remote drive controls affixed to the outside of the platform that could be accessed by Todd’s pinplants. Once equipped with a retractable sunshade—Todd’s skin was just as sensitive to sunburn as a Human—he had a vehicle allowing him to travel almost anywhere a Human could.

  The enclosure above the interaction shelf of Todd’s pool now sported a set of rungs and ladders making it look like Human exercise equipment. It made talking, Tri-V viewing, and even poker much more comfortable for Todd and his Human friends.

  Todd now experienced more of the culture and socialization of the Humans. There were poker games, the drinking of beer—and Kazi was right, once the rice crop came in, it was possible to improve the quality of Neill’s home-brew—and viewing Earth Tri-V and older entertainments. At first, Todd discussed the Galactic origins of himself and his species, but he gradually began to avoid the subject until Bailey, point-blank, asked him about it.

  “You don’t talk about it anymore. You wondered who you were and where you came from for the past two years, and now you won’t say—or flash—anything about it!” Bailey waited a moment and continued, “Does it scare you?”

  Todd was silent for a long time, not even flashing the patterns that equated to muttering to himself. “It is not that I am scared, Derek. But I have been thinking about the implications of my being here.”

  “How so?”

  “My autobiographical memory was wiped. If it had been purely biological, it should have returned once my pinplants rebooted. If it was electromagnetic, I should not have regained any memory or BCI functions. So, my ship was in a battle that it barely survived. In fact, I only survived in a sealed isolation pod. My mind was wiped, and my equipment self-destructed when Human DNA was detected.” Todd flashed a pattern Bailey was used to seeing when the cephalopod was frustrated. “So, there must have been something…I believe the term you use is ‘unsavory.’ Whatever I was doing was considered too secret to allow me to be captured, and there appears to be an unknown enemy or hostile force that was trying to stop me.”

  “The meltdown could have been triggered by any species. You don’t know it was because it was Human,” Bailey countered. “In fact, maybe it was any DNA but your own.”

  “Actually, I know that it was not specific to your DNA. I have learned that my kind reproduces by budding, and several physiological signs suggest it is going to happen to me in the next few years. That means all Wrogul DNA is identical, except for mutations. Most mutations are nonviable, so there is very little that could possibly be unique about my DNA.” He flashed the frustrated pattern again. “However, your point about anyone other than my own kind triggering the failsafe is valid. It does not make me feel any better.”

  “So, you don’t like what you might find out?”

  “I do not trust what I might find out, Derek.” Todd pulled himself out of the tank so he could look directly at his friend—brown, Human eyes with round pupils to green cephalopod eyes with rectangular pupils. “Humans are naïve; Galactics are not to be trusted. If I am afraid of anything, it is that my kind—these Wrogul—are no better!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Styx River community site continued to grow. In a few short years they added laboratories, manufactories, and an increasing number of family dwellings. The new Styx Town was growing. It was closer to the starport than Landing City—the nominal capital of the colony—making it the logical place for trade with the quarterly Earth-colony circuit ship and the increasing number of Union trade ships…and trade they did.

  The unique hydrosphere of the Styx, with its high concentration of minerals from volcanic runoff, made for fertile soils associated with some of the most rare and desired agricultural products on Earth—coffee, macadamia nuts, pineapples, sugar cane. The added benefit of the sulfur-loving microbes, mosses, and orchids provided raw materi
als for biotechnology and pharmaceutical development. The new community at the center of the Styx delta quickly became the economic engine of Azure, with the income from food and beverage exports surpassing even the harvest from the warm shallow seas.

  “You realize this makes you a Captain of Industry now,” Bailey said as the Human from the First Bank of Azure left the structure which fully enclosed the last fifteen meters of the new canal stretching from the Styx delta to the Wrogul pool. The canal allowed a continuous supply of the brackish water to the habitat, and the new building served as a combined social center and meeting place for both Humans and Wrogul yet to come…for Todd had discovered he was about to bud.

  “I realize I am the common factor should any of this fail.” Todd waved a tentacle, seemingly indicating the building, but Bailey understood he meant the majority of Styx Town. In truth, while the precious cache of nanite materials, fabricators, and Union credits constituted essential capital, the true wealth of the town lay in the Human talent attracted by those initial investments. The biotech industry founded by Todd and Bailey was no longer the majority employer in the area.

  “You’re just cranky from budding.” Bailey said. “Prenatal hormones.”

  Todd flashed a pattern that Bailey knew conveyed derision, sarcasm, and exasperation. It was the Wrogul equivalent of a raspberry, and it evoked a laugh from the Human.

  “I do not have hormones as you know them, Bailey, and you of all people should know that!”

  Bailey offered a placating gesture. “Just kidding, buddy, just kidding. Have you decided on a name?”

  “No, the young one will decide his own names once he integrates his own personalities,” Todd flashed.

  The oceanographer looked confused. “He? And yet you’re budding asexually.” Bailey did in fact know more about the cephalopod species that were so similar in morphology to his friend, and they did not have a male and female sex as Humans knew it.

  “‘He’ is the standard convention for single-sex species. I have looked at your Earth languages, and despite all of the protest, the use of the male pronoun is not due to patriarchy, but rather is the original pronoun from before language distinguished the sexes.” Todd’s BCI pinplants meant he had direct access to anything on the Human AetherNet, and even the GalNet updates that came in on visiting ships.

  “Yeah, okay. I didn’t know that, professor.” Bailey said without sarcasm. Todd flashed satisfaction.

  “Yo, Todd! You sick?” someone entering the enclosure said. Brent Roeder was a relative newcomer to Styx Town, a biochemist who had moved out from Landing City two months earlier rather than commute daily to the newly-built laboratory complex. “What’s that growth-thingy on your side?”

  “The ‘growth-thingy,’ as you call it, is a bud, Doctor Roeder. It’s how I reproduce, and I thought you knew that?” The biochemist had spent considerable time with Todd studying his adaptation to the levels of salt and sulfur in the estuary. One would have thought he had paid more attention to his subject.

  “Oh, yeah. So you’re going to have a kid?”

  Todd flashed annoyance but answered patiently. “I am going to have one offspring, it is true, but I fail to see what immature Capra have to do with it.”

  “Okay, okay. An offspring then. When’s it going to be born?”

  “The bud will grow for two more months, then it will separate.”

  “How long to grow up, then?”

  “A Wrogul bud has all the memories of the donor-parent and does not need to grow up.” Todd made the light flash that translated as a sigh. “Such memories as they are. I have no idea if the offspring will have any of the autobiographical memories I lack.”

  “Bummer, man. But, hey, groovy!” Roeder leaned in and looked closer at the bud. “Right on, I can see features. Looks like blue eyes, though, instead of green like yours.” He straightened back up. “Well, good luck, Mazel Tov, and all that. I hope the little sucker grows up to be just like you!” With a laugh, Roeder placed the biochemical samples he was delivering on an adjacent table and promptly left.

  Something about the man just…irritated Todd. He couldn’t put it into words, and he had to settle for light flashes. Kazi said it was because the man was a hippie, whatever that meant. He did not know what the biochemist’s pelvic arches had to do with behavior, but Todd had to admit the man was rather broad, not to mention dense…in more than one sense, as he’d learned from his Human friends.

  Hmm, blue eyes instead of green. What he’d read about the Wrogul suggested they had yellow eyes fading to a sort of dingy white. He did not know why his eyes were green—what made him different—but apparently at least this offspring would continue the distinction.

  * * *

  The day came when it was time for the bud to separate. It had grown to approximately one-tenth the size of Todd’s own body, and he knew it would continue to grow rapidly for the next year, reaching maturity soon after.

  “So, what are you going to name him?” Cavanaugh asked the question again. He’d brought the latest output from his distillery to toast the event with Todd, Bailey, and Kazi. It had been distilled a year ago and stored in wooden barrels since that time, but Kazi said it was still raw. He certainly had to admit it was potent.

  “As I have said many times, Wrogul choose their own name after budding,” he assured his friends. “He will be able to talk to me, but until I can give him nanites and a pinplant of his own in a few months, he will not be able to interface with the comms.”

  “Too bad. I don’t know if Wrogul play with toys, but I made him this.” This turned out to be a piece of driftwood carved in the shape of a submersible.

  “It that the Nautilus?” asked Kazi.

  “Yeah!” Cavanaugh exclaimed. “I copied it from that old Earth movie we watched several Sevendays ago.”

  “I miss poker night,” grumped Bailey.

  “Me, too,” replied Cavanaugh, “but once we finally taught LaFanto a lesson and Ol’ Eight-Arms started playing multiple hands at once, no one will play. Even the mercs have been warned off.”

  “I, for one, thoroughly enjoy movie night, Neill,” said Kazi. “I think we should start in on the Godzilla movies next. I have the full set.”

  “Gentlemen, it is time.” Todd began to flash randomly, then in a repeating pattern. The bud did the same, and then the last piece of tissue connecting parent to bud thinned and separated. The two Wrogul flashed in unison for a moment, but gradually the patterns began to diverge. The bud swam a short distance away and grasped the toy submarine Cavanaugh had made. “To answer your question, Neill, Wrogul young do not usually play with toys, but he seems to like the carving.”

  “Yeah, look at the way he’s holding the sub. Captain Nemo would be proud.”

  Nemo. That was a good name.

  * * * * *

  Intermezzo

  The service was short, because Bailey would have wanted it that way.

  More than fifty years had passed since Doctor Derek Bailey had come to Azure as a young oceanographer, charged with farming the seas for essential foodstuffs until land-based agriculture could take hold. He’d married the woman who would eventually be governor of the colony for ten years, and he’d never left his adopted home in all that time.

  Cynthia Bailey had been gone for five years, and Derek had not been the same since her death. Now Derek’s two closest friends stood on a pier holding an urn containing ashes from both Derek and Cynthia. One man stood—stooped slightly with age—and one Wrogul hung from a bar attached to a motorized chair, two arms supporting his weight, two holding the urn, the others dipping down into the blue-green waters.

  “He would have liked this, Neill.”

  “Yeah, I know. I thought Vincent would shit a brick at the cost, but then, he’s not paying for it.”

  Together, the three friends had been the originators or backers of most of the industry that had sprung up at Styx Town. The beverage industry alone was a major economic driver, but the biochemica
l and bioengineering companies had paid for the trip.

  “The sea is saltier. It itches,” Todd said.

  “Yeah, about double the salt content as Azure.” At a glance from his friend, Cavanaugh continued with mock indignation: “Hey, I looked it up! Without Derek or Kazi here to instantly know all of this stuff I figured I’d better know the composition of Earth’s seas so you didn’t get sick.”

  “I appreciate that, Neill.” Todd waited in silence for a while. “I will miss him.”

  “Me, too, buddy. Me, too.”

  Todd pulled one arm up from the water and removed the top of the urn. He handed the vessel to Cavanaugh, who held his hands up in denial, insisting Todd do the honors. “Hey, the EPA only gave us this waiver because I told them you requested it. A Human would have been taxed heavily, but since you’re a Galactic, they tripped all over themselves to approve the paperwork.”

  “Very well, Neill. I shall do the deed, but you’ve got the other job.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Using six tentacles to maneuver the urn out away from the dock, Todd poured the ashes of one of his best friends into the water of that friend’s home world. Meanwhile, his companion recited the words that had been tradition for hundreds of years:

  “No man has ever served at sea without knowing that each day could be his last and no one would even know where at sea he lay. No man served a day at sea without the knowledge that the ship he sailed might not survive to sail another day. But no man at sea let these fears overcome him. He knew his shipmates were beside him to help stand the watch, to plot the course, and to be the family and support we all need to meet and survive another day. They were his shipmates. As each day ended, men at sea counted their blessings of a day well done, and to mark the end of their watch, they would toll the bell, the eternal mark of the passing of time at sea.”