Happiness: A Planet (37 page)

“Couldn’t tell.  I was looking at it from behind, over its forward edge.”

“How were they making it?”

“Looked to me as if it was making itself.”

The loose rubble on the top of the embankment snatched at their feet. They had only a faint flicker of starlight to guide them. Neither suggested descending to the road. Awen tripped, fell full length, almost took Tulla down with him. Scrambling up he frantically checked his cameras. They walked on apart. Tulla tripped, cut her shin. As Awen helped her to her feet he asked if she oughtn’t to call the Director.

“Let’s make certain it is the trail first,” she said wiping grit off her palms.

For another hour they panting half stumbled half ran, stubbing their toes on the larger rocks of the embankment rubble, grazing their shins, twisting their ankles. Once Awen, crying out with the pain, fell onto his knee. Yelping he limped a few steps, contained the sickening pain under a deep breath, and pressed on. Tulla slipped over the side of the embankment and, clawing at the rubble with her fingers, slithered down a few meters. She crawled back to the top. While waiting for her Awen examined the road ahead through his night lens.

“Look,” he helped Tulla over the edge. “You can see the sheen on it now.”

Trembling Tulla held the camera, still attached to Awen’s neck, to her eye. On the road ahead there was a definite change to a watery glimmer. Then she perceived the unmistakable movement of the trail’s leading edge, glistening in the starlight as it rolled slowly forward. She released the camera,

“I’ll call Jorge now.”

Awen went on ahead of her. Tulla had difficulty dialling the number in the dark. After every wrong fumbling number she glanced up to see Awen’s bustling silhouette yet further away. Finally she reached Jorge.

“Tulla here,” she curtly told him. “The trail’s started. Inland sea end. Been going for over an hour.”

“You’re certain?”

“I can see it from here. Must be about 5 or 6 kilometres along the road by now.”

“I’ll call the police, cancel today’s patrols. You call Tevor Cade, tell him to be on the alert.”

“I can’t see to dial here,” Tulla said. “Be easier if you did it.”

“The cameraman there?”

“Of course!” Tulla snapped.

“I’ll come over,” Jorge said.

Tulla hastened after Awen.

She occasionally glimpsed his tiny silhouette against the lighter grey of the sky. He seemed to be moving faster than her. She became worried that on his own he might do something reckless, could not remember if she had told him that the trail was corrosive. Head down she lengthened her stride. When she glanced up the trail was clearly visible.

The trail’s liquid sheen mirrored the lighter grey of the sky, its opaque surface pierced by the occasional reflection of an isolated star. The thickness of the trail surprised her. Though, because of the uniformity of the road and the deceptive starlight, she still couldn’t tell how far away it was. Nor could she see Awen. Hurrying on she gasped as her ankle turned under her. Hopping a few steps she gritted her teeth and forced herself on, muttering with grim humour,

“Dedication. Such dedication.”

When the phone rang the shock of it almost physically knocked her over. She grabbed it to her ear.

“We’re on our way,” Jorge told her. “The police are on stand-by alert. Including our own ship. I’ve called Tevor Cade. Their hourly transmissions are continuing as before. The last twenty minutes ago. He’ll let us know of any other developments. How long is the trail now?”

“Can’t tell.” Awen’s stationary silhouette was like a small pinnacle of rock. Tulla realised that he was level with the leading edge of the trail.

“It seems to be coming towards me as fast as I’m going towards it,” she told Jorge. “Looks from here to be about half a meter thick. And it’s making itself.”

“You’re not on the road?”

“Above it. I want to get closer.” She rang off.

The closer Tulla came to the edge of the trail the more frequently did she pause to study it. A metre higher than the road its top was perfectly smooth, and it seemed to be rolling forward of its own volition. She examined the night sky for any sign of Nautili ships, shadows blocking the stars. None. She had also lost sight of Awen.

The trail was now obliquely before and below her, rolling ever onward. It made no sound.

“Awen!” she whispered. “Awen!” Glancing nervously to the sky she crept forward whispering his name. The trail had the viscosity of jelly, seemed to emanate silence.

“Look at this,” Awen rose from the dark before her. He had been crouched filming. Her anxiety had her, with relief, gripping his arm. Then she took the proffered camera while he filmed with another.

She squatted down to steady her arms. Through the camera lens she could now see into the slime. Awen crouched beside her.

“See them? Tiny wriggling dots. It’s small creatures making the trail. Look up here,” he took her by the elbow. The leading edge had passed them. He stopped her just in advance of it.

“Focus on the road,” he directed her. “Got it? Watch each of those wriggling dots. As they come into contact with the road they curl up and die. See them? Then the next comes over it. And then the next. Like small worms.”

Telling Tulla to film with the camera he had given her they walked along with the leading edge of the trail. Occasionally one of them would squat to film, the other would pass them by, and in turn pause to film. Awen erected a tripod and concentrated over some close-ups. When he packed up and hurried after Tulla he told her that the ones at the sides were dying as well, to be replaced by another and another.

The Spokesman’s plane came in low over the mountains, landed near the cabins. Tulla’s phone rang. She was ready for it this time, told Jorge what she had so far seen.

“How fast is it advancing?” Jorge asked.

“We have to run to catch up with it at times. I’d say about 5 kilometres an hour.”

Jorge said that he and the Spokesman would walk down to meet them. Tulla told them to be careful, the gel was corrosive. Awen had listened to her conversation.

“How come they don’t dissolve then?” he asked her.

“They do,” Tulla said. “Look back here. See the dots where they died on the bottom?” They both looked through their cameras at the shrivelled dots on the floor of the road. Above those dots the mass of creatures wriggled on to the forward edge and to their death. Slowly the dots on the road floor disappeared.

“Must have some protective coating while they’re alive,” Tulla said. “Soon as they die they lose it.”

Hurrying after the leading edge Awen wondered what the creatures were.

“Probably some biological agents,” Tulla said with distaste. “Many of our primitive machines were bio-engineered. Until the use of living tissue was banned. The Nautili don’t seem to have much regard for life.”

“What are they going to use it for though?”

“Move heavy plant seems the most likely explanation.”

“Anyone ever seen it done?”

“No.”

Tulla paused to look through her camera. Awen hurried on ahead to set up his tripod in order to film in close-up the death and dissolution of one of the creatures. He was shutting up the tripod when he became aware of Tulla beyond the vanguard of the trail talking to the short round shape of the Spokesman and the tall thin shadow of Jorge Arbatov.

When Awen caught up with them they were taking it in turns to look through the camera Awen had leant Tulla.

“Got your scoop then?” the tall figure of Jorge greeted Awen.

“Would’ve been better in daylight,” Awen said.

“By my calculation it’ll be complete in another six hours,” Jorge said. “At dawn.”

“Pity,” Awen said, and moved on ahead to film once more the advance of the trail.

The two open cabin doors were now clearly visible twin obelisks of orange light. The group stopped as they heard the approach of another plane. Before they saw its navigation lights the Spokesman took the phone from Tulla, called up the police bases. The plane was not one of theirs, had come from the South.

The group watched the new plane land beside the Spokesman’s. The Spokesman told the police to intercept and redirect all other craft from
the area; and the group advanced ahead of the trail to confront the plane’s occupants.

Its one occupant was the Senate Member for South Five. He came ambling unconcernedly along the top of the embankment to meet them.

“Soon as the Doctor told me the trail was making itself,” he laconically scratched his bristled jaw, “I had to come have a look. Can I?” He held out his hand to Tulla for the camera. Awen walked back with him to the trail. The Senate Member peered through the camera.

“What do you make of it?” Awen asked him. “Tulla reckons it’s bio-engineering.” The Senate Member for South Five chuckled,

“Far from it.” He adjusted the focus, “This is a migration.”

“You mean they’re Nautili?”

“Embryonic Nautili. No more than swimming eggs really. Fry. But they’re Nautili.” He removed the camera from his face, “Any objections to my taking a specimen?”

“Yes.” Jorge and the others had joined them. “No-one goes near that trail.”

“Pity. Could have learnt their genus.”

“Wouldn’t do you much good anyway,” Awen said. “Soon as they die they dissolve. Look.”

The Senate Member walked along with the leading edge, watched the wriggling creatures shrivel, die and dissolve on the surface of the road. He asked Awen if he had any close-ups of the process. Awen said he had.

“Might be able to get some idea of its genus from them.”

“What do you mean,” Tulla asked the Senate Member, “that this is a migration?”

“This is probably an integral part of their reproductive process. Why they always have to have an inland sea. Our pelagic brethren breed and spawn there, then the young have to make it overland to the wider oceans.”

“You’re saying that they deliberately send so many of their young to certain death?”

“A dramatic way of looking at it. Could say the same of our own reproductive process — all those millions of spermatozoa going to waste time after time. This is no different. The most able make it. And migrations of this sort are common amongst planetary creatures. They travel from one end of the planet to the other to breed, then travel back again. Fishes, birds, insects and mammals. Part of the process of natural selection. You have heard of natural selection?”

With all of them wanting to hear what was being said, with all of them stumbling into and bumping off each other as they tried to keep pace with the trail, with one or another of them gasping or hissing cursing as a part of their lower anatomy came into unexpected contact with a hard rock, with one or another of them clutching an arm, a tunic, a leg to stop themselves overbalancing, with one or another of them glancing always apprehensively to the night sky for Nautili ships, the excitement of that small group of people was palpable.

“So that,” Tulla gestured back to the inland sea, “is their nursery?”

“Could put it that way,” the dark head of the Senate Member nodded.

“It would explain why they don’t like primitives fishing on it. Be like us letting a mad butcher loose in our kindergartens.”

“And why the Nautili wipe out the plankton feeders.”

“Yes. Yes,” Tulla said. “You got all this Awen?”

“I got it,” Awen said from behind his camera.

“If it is their nursery,” the Senate Member said, apologised as he collided with Jorge, “it would satisfactorily explain their forty year spread. The colonisation is pursued by the offspring, who breed in the new planet’s seas, who in turn produce more offspring who venture out in search of new planets, new seas.”

“So the planets,” the Spokesman said, “turn out to be the breeding grounds in more ways than one.”

“Must be the trace elements,” the Senate Member trundled out the old joke.

“I thought,” Jorge said to Tulla, “the trails were only 40 centimetres thick. This one’s closer to a meter.”

“A couple of days evaporation,” the Senate Member replied on Tulla’s behalf, “will soon condense it.”

The group was now almost level with the cabins. The Spokesman hurried on ahead to make everyone coffee. In Tulla’s cabin, while the trail passed them by, the five of them discussed the night’s new ideas. At one point Tulla said,

“They can’t be that advanced if they still have to rely on such primitive methods of reproduction.”

“Maybe,” Awen grinned at her, “they enjoy it.” Tulla blushed.

The Senate Member for South Five asked if he could have copies of all the film Awen had taken this night,

“From film of the young we may be able to build up a picture of an adult. And I must disagree with you,” he turned on Tulla, “about their not being advanced. Indeed this is proof, if proof were needed, that they are extremely advanced. Most marine creatures eat their young. Not that all fishy creatures are cannibals, but the free-floating young of most marine species are hard to distinguish. A
few young of course always survive. Maintains the equilibrium of the environment. At some time in the Nautili’s distant past, though, they must have learnt to distinguish their own offspring from the rest. And not only did they themselves not eat them, they also prevented others eating them. Thus the equilibrium of their environment was upset. Thus they began to expand. Thus they colonised other planets.”