Iterations and other stories (collection)

The orange blood wasn’t pooling in the lowest part of the floor. Rather, it was remaining in a puddle in the middle of the floor—and the puddle’s edges were rippling visibly. The middle of the pool started to dry up. As the four humans watched, the opening in the middle grew bigger and bigger. But it wasn’t round—rather, it had straight edges. Meanwhile, the outside of the puddle was also taking on definite shape, forming straight edges parallel to those on the inside.

“It’s—it’s a triangle” said Tina.

“The orange pigment in the blood—it’s probably iron-based,” said Raji. “Maybe it’s magnetic; maybe the blood is pooling along the field lines formed by magnetic equipment beneath the hull…”

But then pairs of liquid arms started extending from the vertices of the central triangle. The four humans watched dumbfounded while the blood continued to move. Suddenly, the six growing arms turned in directions perpendicular to the way they’d previously been expanding.

Finally, the outline was complete: the central object was a right-angle triangle, and off of each face of the triangle was a square.

Suddenly, lines started to cross diagonally through two of the squares—one square was crossed from the lower-left to the upper-right; another from the upper-left to the lower right; and the third—

—the third square was crosshatched, as if the patterns from the other squares had been overlain on top of each other.

“The square of the hypotenuse,” said Tina, her voice full of wonder, “equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.”

“What?” said Bancroft.

“The Pythagorean theorem,” said Raji, absolutely astonished. “It’s a diagram illustrating one of the basic principles of geometry.”

“A diagram made by blood?” said Bancroft incredulously.

A sudden thought hit Raji. “Can your scanner sequence nucleic acids?” he asked, looking at Cardinal.

“Not quickly.”

“Can it compare strands? See if they’re the same?”

“Yes, it can do that.”

“Compare the nucleic acid from a body cell with that from one of the blood cells.”

Cardinal set to work. “They don’t match,” she said after a few minutes.

“Incredible,” said Raji shaking his head.

“What?” said Tina.

“In all Earth lifeforms, the DNA is the same in every cell of the body, including in those blood cells that do contain DNA— non-mammalian red corpuscles, as well as white corpuscles in all types of animals. But the alien’s blood doesn’t contain the same generic information as the alien’s body.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see? The blood and the body aren’t even related! They’re separate lifeforms. Of course the body has a tiny brain—it’s just a vehicle for the blood. The blood is the intelligent lifeform, and the body is only a host.” Raji pointed at the orange diagram on the floor. “That’s what it’s telling us, right there, on the floor! It’s telling us not to worry about saving the body—we should be trying to save the blood!”

“That must be why the host has built-in valves to shut off cuts,” said Cardinal. “If the blood cells collectively form an intelligent creature, obviously that creature wouldn’t want to give up part of itself just to clot wounds.”

“And when the host dies, the orifices and valves open up, to let the blood escape,” said Bancroft. “The host doesn’t hate the blood—this isn’t an enslavement; it’s a partnership.”

“What do we do now?” asked Tina.

“Collect all the blood and take it somewhere safe,” said Raji. “Then see how much we can communicate with it.”

“And then?”

“And then we wait,” said Raji, looking up at the transparent ceiling. It was getting dark; soon the stars would be visible. “We wait for other aliens to come on a rescue mission.”

Raji dropped his gaze. The alien blood was forming a new pattern on the floor: the outlines of two large circles, separated by about twenty centimeters of space.

“What’s it trying to say?” asked Cardinal.

Lines started to squiggle across the circles. The lines on the right-hand circle seemed random, but suddenly Raji recognized the ones on the left: the coastlines of North America. It was a picture of Earth and of another planet, presumably the alien’s home world.

As the four humans watched, the two circles moved closer together, closer still, the gap between them diminishing, until at last they gently touched.

Raji smiled. “I think that means we’re going to be friends.”

Forever

Author’s Introduction

Mike Resnick and Marty Greenberg, who had re-energized my short-fiction career by commissioning “Just Like Old Times” for their Dinosaur Fantastic, decided to do a second volume of dinosaur-related stories, and once again I was asked to participate.

Although the dinosaur culture in this piece bears some resemblance to that portrayed in my novels Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner, the Shizoo are definitely not Quintaglios.

Attentive readers will note that the Jacob Coin who is quoted at the beginning of this story is also the main character in my “Lost in the Mail.”