The wasteland continued as far as she could see.
James had seen the maps, so she had a fair idea how long it would take to reach the alien settlement. Even so, knowing she had sixty kilometers to cross and walking that distance were two very different things.
James was nowhere near as young as her body appeared. She had been fifty-three years old at the moment her training had finally been certified as complete and her Mindprint had been taken. Being changed so completely was therefore an extremely jarring experience, one that couldn’t be resolved with just a few nights of sleep. Another factor—one that filled her with constant unease and a growing sense of dread—was the sheer scale of the world around her. These equine aliens were not a tall race, and she had been made into a young member of their species.
There was no hiding from this reality. Every new object James encountered was another reminder. Trees towered over her, and small shrubs became impassable barriers to her sight.
At least she had the XE-201. James felt strength in her limbs unabated by the harsh climate. No thorns or sharp rock had any chance of damaging such advanced protection.
Learn to love your Biosleeve, she remembered reading, near the first page of the Stellar Pioneering Society Handbook. It’s the only one you’ll ever have.
James sought out the path of least resistance that took her in the direction she needed to go. As a human she could’ve easily walked or climbed over the broken crags of this inhospitable plateau of rock and gravel. Her tiny body was simply not equal to the task, not with as uncoordinated as she still was.
Fortunately the rocky planes were broken with ancient riverbeds, with an occasional slope leading in or out. James found one of these, and walked along the long-dead soil, tearing up dry dirt with her boots. She walked for a full day, letting her computation surface fill the air with familiar music as she went.
Eventually it got dark, and James found herself an opening in the rock for a shelter. She didn’t remove the XE-201—it was made for extended field use. Of course, just because the suit was mechanically capable of sustaining her for weeks in the field didn’t mean it was comfortable. James found herself lying awake near the entrance of the little cave, resting on her side and resting her head against the inflatable field-pillow. She stared up at the starry sky as wispy clouds blew by, searching for Earth.
There was no seeing it with the naked eye, of course. Even Sol was too small, too immeasurably distant. Even so, she found herself imagining she could see it, past the numerous mining stations and the planet’s artificial rings to the swamps of Florida where she had spent most of her time training.
Each Forerunner Probe traveled slower than light, and there was no guarantee hers had even come from Earth. It might’ve been decades or even centuries since the original Dr. James Irwin had committed his Mindprint to the Stellar Pioneering Society to join with the many thousands of others already stored there. I wonder what you would think of yourself, an adolescent female equine. Probably not the immortality you dreamed of.
Eventually she must’ve slept. She slept through dawn for the first time in her memory. Instead of sunrise, James woke with the touch of icy water on her face. She blinked in surprise, eyes widening with a faint, animal squeak. As she rose, she found she splashed in water that had crept right up her suit. She hadn’t felt any of it, until it rose up past the edge of her pillow and touched unprotected coat. James shrugged the sopping-wet saddlebags back onto her armor, thankful everything inside was waterproof.
It was pouring rain outside. The entire sky was solid gray, broken by darker patches of angry black roiling with storm. Rain came down in a torrent over her head, rain she had no helmet to protect her from. It was all James could do to slosh her way out of her makeshift shelter and into the canyon of red and brown stone.
The water already reached past what would’ve been her ankles, if she still had them. It moved steadily away from the direction she needed to go, hard enough that she had to lean in and concentrate or else be swept away with it. As the rain came down, currents of water cascaded over the sides of the platforms above, gradually filling the canyon.
“There was supposed to be a clear sky…” she muttered to herself, voice lost in the rush of wind and rain. The sound of water drowned out almost everything. James turned immediately away from the direction she’d been walking, back towards the last ramp she remembered from the day before. Now instead of getting pushed backward by the current, the danger was having her hooves ripped out from under her.
James reached over to just above her right front boot, pressing the (comically large) button to activate her shortwave link. “Computer, can you hear me?” she shouted, over the rain and wind battering her face.
“Transmission received!” Responded the computer, barely loud enough for her to hear. “Go ahead, Dr. Irwin!”
“Why the hell didn’t you warn me it was going to rain?” she shouted, scanning the walls with increasing desperation. It was getting harder and harder to see. What was worse, the water had risen almost to her knees. She was still warm and dry (except for her neck), but it was basically impossible to change direction at this point. She could only coast along with the water, pushing with her legs to steer away from wrong turns and boulders. The water wasn’t just rising, it was accelerating.
The computer’s response sounded washed out and muted. “Barometric pressure readings indicated a stable weather system. Orbital relay satellite detected the gathering storm three hours ago, and your suit was notified. You appear to have disabled notifications while you slept.”
James could only hear it thanks to the little circuit glued to the side of her head, which vibrated the bones instead of using her normal senses. The exterior sounds had been swallowed.
“From now on, forward emergency notifications regardless of my registered notification status!” James roared, not sure if the computer would even hear her anymore. If it responded, she didn’t hear it. All her concentration was now devoted to something far more important.
She could see the way out. A ramp leading up and out of the canyon blurring past her on the left. Past that the canyon narrowed, and the water seemed to froth and boil with the detritus it carried. Deep water would be bad, even with a XE-201. Without a helmet, it would only take one good knock to the head, or getting wedged against a stone, and she would drown.
James kicked and strained against the water, but by now she couldn’t touch the bottom. She was kept afloat only by the positive buoyancy of the suit, and kept from breaking her bones as she knocked into things only thanks to its strength.
She paddled with all her might, mostly by instinct since she had never practiced swimming with four legs. Her forelegs touched land, then dragged through the mud, digging a pair of deep gouges as she was ripped away. James started to spin, rotating around several times before smacking into a large rock in the center of the channel.
“Help!” She screamed in spite of herself, her voice going shrill and eyes filling with tears. She kicked out with all her legs as she did so, very much on instinct, but that didn’t make a difference. The water shoved her under as she ground against the boulder, chilling her. She took in a mouthful of it and started to hack and cough.
James found her whole world fading as water began filling her lungs. She saw flashes of memory—the day she’d finally gone in to get her Mindprint scanned, the cocktail of medications she had taken, how nervous and excited she had felt. Though she’d known that version of her would keep living on Earth, she’d also had hope, however distantly, that somewhere, somewhen, Humans would need a linguist.
One day they would find intelligent life. The data of her mind would be placed inside a probe beside thousands of others, and sent to discover whatever waited beyond the horizon. If she were very lucky, it would discover they weren’t alone. To have come all this way—to have the wildest hopes of probability confirmed only to drown before even meeting an alien seemed like a tragic, horrible shame.
She couldn’t let it happen.
James’s world came back into sharp focus. She couldn’t see anything, her eyes had been completely overwhelmed by the rushing water and dirt. She couldn’t feel anything but the moisture, creeping in through the pressure seal around her neck. She hadn’t taken the time to shave her coat away to get a better seal on her skin, and she was paying for it with a trickle of moisture down her back.
Of course, she’d be dead in a few more moments if she didn’t do something. Being wet would be the least of her worries. James couldn’t get past the current, couldn’t pull herself off the rock and back into the water. The pressure on her body was just too great. But maybe she didn’t have to.
James focused on her right leg, rotating it very slowly in the water. Her body never could’ve accomplished the motion on her own, not with the horrible strength it took. The XE-201 contracted, its fibers granting her inhuman strength. She twisted her leg, until one of the buttons integrated into the side pressed against the side of the boulder. Something blasted out the end of her leg with the strength of a gunshot, trailing a thin line behind it. A second later she felt the faint impact down the line as her grapple impacted the rocky canyon wall.
James counted out five agonizing seconds, her vision going dark. Then something yanked on her arm, so hard that it would’ve been pulled from its socket without the armor to reinforce her body. Motors integrated into the leg whined and strained in protest, dragging her off the boulder. It only took a few inches—just enough to break her precarious balance. James was yanked violently to the right, so harshly that the hook was ripped clean out of the rock. She ground into the dust and gravel before bobbing up.
James hacked and coughed, and the world came into focus again. She could barely see the gray sky, barely see the canyon walls rising around her. Were it not for the buoyancy of the suit, she would’ve been dragged under the water again, never to emerge. Her lungs burned, her head pounded, and her hooves were going numb from the water pooling in her boots. Even with the protection of her suit, she was likely going to be bruised and bloody. How much longer before even the sophisticated fibers couldn’t protect her?
“Help!” she screamed again, knowing there was no one to come for her. Her probe had a dozen aerial drones, not one of which would be strong enough to help her. Those drones were mostly designed to keep the probe’s landing site clear—not to rescue an explorer who had gotten in way over her proverbial head.
Then she saw it. A blur of motion near the clouds, streaking down towards her. Had the computer heard after all? There wasn’t a remote possibility of a survey drone dragging her out of the water, reduced weight notwithstanding. What would it do, record a video of her death for research purposes? James couldn’t help it—she started to cry. Whether the instinct came from the body or her own failures as an explorer, she would never know. Yet it felt like the right thing to do. She was going to die after only a week of subjective life. If anyone had a right to it, it was her.
The blur above her resolved as the canyon walls took another turn, yet it tracked her motion perfectly. As well as a drone with an internal gyroscope might’ve done. Yet as she looked up, she saw no drone at all. What she saw seemed impossible. An alien, not unlike the way she looked, except that it was bigger, faster, and evidently more mature. Most impressive, the creature flew. In defiance of the wind, the rain, and all known laws of aviation, the alien flew, leaving a faint streak of yellow and orange behind it.
It opened its mouth, shouting to her, but its words were completely lost in the wind. James shouted back, waving one hoof towards the creature as a sign that she was still alive. It was all the effort she could muster at this point. The alien dived down towards her, aiming its forelegs as though it were a missile. It flew right down over the water, catching itself in a perfect hover inches above the rushing water, and reaching out with forelegs.
Now James could hear it, though of course she couldn’t understand what it yelled. The mission hadn’t called for a linguist for no reason. But she didn’t need to understand it to know what that gesture meant, and she extended her own hooves, reaching them out of the water as best she could.
It was enough. The alien wrapped tightly around her, lifting her an inch or so above the water and flying straight ahead. She—James was fairly certain it was a she—didn’t try to pull her out of the water.
Water roared around them, and James was battered to the left and right as her dangling hind legs struck submerged debris. None of it caught her, thankfully. “Why aren’t you—” The water fell out from under her in a sudden, spectacular waterfall. James stared down at the abyss, roaring water and jagged stone hundreds of meters below. “Damn.” She very nearly lost consciousness right there.
She didn’t, though she might’ve wished she had. The alien didn’t land on the plateau behind them, didn’t even turn around. Instead she angled herself upward, lifting higher and higher towards the clouds.
She said something else, and now James could make out her words a little clearer. “Kio en suna nomo vi faras ĉi tie?”
“I’m sorry,” she responded, looking away timidly. “I can’t understand you!” Her body was drained. She was too weak to hold up her head, much less carry an intelligent conversation with this alien. She didn’t want to think about how badly damaged her body might be beneath the XE-201. It was too much, beyond what her tiny body could cope with.
The conscious world slipped away.