The Chromosomal Code Read online

  The Chromosomal Code

  by

  Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Copyright Lawrence Watt Evans 1984

  Ebook edition 2012

  All rights reserved

  Cover by Lawrence Watt Evans

  Dedicated to

  Philip K. Dick

  whom I never met

  but who was long my favorite author

  Chapter One

  The landscape was white and gray and black, with no trace of color. The sky was the dull, dead, dirty off-white of winter on this June day; the ground was hidden beneath the pale white sheen of clean snow. The building ahead of him, what little of it showed, was the rough white of painted concrete, picked out with the gray and black of shadows. Black shadows also served to mark the pine trees that edged the open area that had once been a parking lot; the dull green of their remaining needles was lost in the sodden masses of snow that weighed them down.

  The building's facade was largely hidden in a long strip of shadow where the overhang failed to meet the snowdrifts, a strip perhaps fifteen meters long and one meter high, divided into segments by the peeling white-painted, unornamented pillars. At one point to the right of center the lower edge of the gap dipped down, the sharp white edge of the drifts broken through. His dirty brown coat the only color in sight, John Starkman was headed toward this break in the wall of snow.

  The footsteps he followed through the drifts were his own, layered on top of one another but all of his own making, the only break in the smooth surface of the snow and the only trace of human presence. He had discovered the building a month or so ago, astonishingly, miraculously intact, and had made the long trek out to it half a dozen times. It was such a rich find that he had seriously considered moving from his long-established home to somewhere nearer at hand.

  On a day like this, however, he didn't mind the walk.

  Enjoying the unaccustomed June warmth, with temperatures as high as three or even five degrees above freezing, Starkman had the fur-lined hood of his coat flung back; the gentle breeze, so unlike the freezing gales of winter, kept his untidy hair clear of his eyes. There was little glare under the leaden, overcast sky, and no chance that he could imagine of encountering another human, so he had left his sunglasses in his pocket.

  He reached the base of the final barrier of snow and clambered up the drift, his feet packing down the powder that had blown into his path since his last visit. For a moment he was reminded of his New England childhood, when climbing drifts had been something he did for fun, rather than out of necessity.

  He half climbed and half slid his way down the other side, catching himself upright again on the narrow strip of sidewalk left bare by the encroaching snow. Before him in the shadowed dimness was the man-sized hole he had broken in the glass front of the little supermarket; the only trace of snow beyond the glass floated in a puddle of dirty water just below the opening, where it had either been blown by a freak of wind or been tracked in on Starkman's boots. He reminded himself that he would have to clear that puddle away somehow if he was to avoid having an inconvenient patch of ice when the warm spell ended. He stepped carefully through the hole and strode past the checkouts into the darkness of the deserted aisles, aisles that were still stacked high with unlooted merchandise. The sound of his boot-heels on tile turned sharp and clear as the slush and snow fell away.

  He marveled anew that even here, so far from the city, no desperate fleeing party or lingering scavenger before him had come across the place and stripped it clean. It was well off the main roads south, and in an area where the neighbors would have been rich enough to leave early, before looting became common, but it was still surprising.

  He found what he wanted and emerged into the dim light at the front of the store with a bottle of Coke in hand. He seated himself comfortably on one of the checkout counters and reached down beside the cash register to retrieve the bottle opener he kept stashed there. When the cap was pried off the bottle fizzed gratifyingly, which he considered a fairly reliable sign that the stuff was still safe to drink. He looked at it critically, noting that there was only a slight trace of ice, then took a long pull at the bottle before resting it once more on his knee and gazing out at the broken window and the barrier of snow beyond.

  It was his custom to take a rest like this before getting down to the serious business of gathering supplies and carrying them back home; the cola was a regular part of it, since the journey always made him thirsty and a little weary. He was convinced that the sugar helped provide the energy necessary for the return trip.

  Sometimes, if there was sufficient light, he would read the paperbacks and the browning tabloids that were ranged around each checkout, challenging himself to identify each of the celebrities the scandal sheets mentioned. On this occasion he just sat, staring out at the snow and taking a swig from the bottle every few seconds, admiring the plate-glass frontage. Except for the entry hole he had made himself, it was still completely sound, as though the supermarket might open for business at any moment. Faded signs advertising specials on chicken and lettuce still clung to the glass, while others had fallen to the floor in mild disarray. One poster neatly covered the glass he had swept aside after breaking his entrance. The fluorescent lights, both in the store and under the overhang out front, were unbroken, as if the flip of a switch could bring them to life as it had long ago.

  The drifts beyond were not more than three meters high at the very most, probably closer to two and a half, and easily a dozen centimeters lower than on his last visit. He wondered how long the good weather would last, and whether he might see bare ground without having to dig for it. That hadn't happened for ten years.

  Such a complete thaw seemed unlikely. Probably, he told himself, the warm spell would pass, and the summer would be neither better nor worse than those that had preceded it.

  He took another long pull on the bottle, then put it down. The puddle under the window caught his attention, and he tried to remember which aisle held buckets and mops and sponges.

  Something moved at the edge of his vision; he started and looked up.

  Something was moving out there, in the area of sky visible between the snowdrifts and the overhang, a dot against the gray-white overcast. His eyes widened from their customary snow-blind squint.

  He tried to tell himself that the dark speck was a bird, some damn fool of a bird that had found its way north again, but the thing was not moving like a bird, with swoops and flutters or riding the breeze. Instead it moved steadily and slowly through the air, along a dead-straight course. It glinted dully despite the clouds.

  Starkman sat still for a long moment, too startled to move. When it finally registered that the thing was not only moving but coming closer, he got quickly to his feet and stepped out through the broken window.

  The first sound reached him, a low throbbing rumble, and his surprise increased beyond what he had thought possible. What he had taken for a plane – and a plane would be quite astonishing enough after all this time – was something else. The sound was wrong. As it drew nearer he saw that the shape was likewise strange. It was formed something like an Indian arrowhead he had had as a boy, a convex-edged triangle forming the prow and a constricted waist joining it to a boxy stern assembly.

  There could be no doubt whatsoever that it was a machine, and a machine like nothing he was familiar with. There were no wings, no rotors, no visible jets, no contrail, yet it was flying. It was gliding smoothly almost directly toward him, its upper side gleaming metal, the details of the rest lost in shadow.

  It seemed to approach for an impossibly long time; it was vastly larger than he had realized at first, larger than he could judge with any accuracy. There were no visible features to give him a scale; the thing's surface appeared smooth and unbroken. He could see no doors, hatches, windows, ports, antennae, or anything else except gray metal.

  The rumbling sound grew steadily until it was a deafening roar as the machine passed directly overhead. It seemed to clear the overhang by mere centimeters, a great dark expanse sliding along above the supermarket no faster than a man could walk, blocking out the feeble filtered sunlight and leaving him in the awesomely complete darkness of its shadow. The vibration of its passing shook the building, rattling cans and bottles within, and somewhere among the aisles a bottle toppled from its shelf with a crash barely discernible over the battering thunder.

  Even at its closest approach Starkman could see no detail on its surface, no welded seams, no rivets, no lights of any sort, no openings or vents. Of course, he knew that the shadows might be hiding them. He was certain that the machine must be farther away than it appeared, though it was definitely at a very low altitude. That meant that it was even larger than he had thought. He stared up at the featureless metal.

  The head of the thing was past, and the darkness receded slightly as the narrow waist moved over, light seeping around its edges. It was as featureless as the prow. The tail assembly restored the deep shadow once again, but he thought he glimpsed irregularities in its surface, though he could not decide what they might be, since they were indistinct in the gloom.

  As the trailing edge of the immense machine moved on past the overhang and out of sight, he remained motionless, staring up at the empty sky it had left behind and blinking in the renewed light.

  The noise receded slowly, somewhere behind him, for a long moment; then, while still a roar worthy of a good-sized waterfall, the sound stopped declining and held steady. Starkman whirled,
as if expecting to see through the concrete rear wall of the supermarket.

  The sound changed, suddenly swooping higher in pitch and altering its tone until it was more a whistle or a scream than a rumble, though still an earth-shaking bass. A hissing blended in an unearthly cacophony, growing in volume until, abruptly, the sound died, as if the plug had been pulled on some immense factory machine.

  Starkman remained motionless for a long moment of the new silence, a silence as complete as before he had first seen the thing approaching. Then, with sudden decisiveness, he turned and scrambled up the snowdrifts. From the top of the drift beside his broken-through path he could easily reach the edge of the overhang; he grabbed the concrete, digging the tips of his fingers into the snow it supported, and dragged himself up, pushing up onto his elbows and then crawling forward into the snow.

  The supermarket's sign lay under the snow, long since fallen back, its plastic face buckled under the weight of the snow; he landed atop it and felt it break beneath his arms. He heard the fluorescent tubes within the sign splintering. He backed off, wary of cutting himself, and pulled himself sideways along the edge of the roof until he was past the end of the old display. Then he hauled himself completely up onto the roof and stood, cautiously.

  He could see nothing but snow; the drifts on the unheated roof were very nearly as tall as those on the ground.

  Annoyed, he climbed up a drift; the partial thaw had left the snow wet and dense, for the most part, so that he had little trouble with slippage. When his head was above the top of the white mass he leaned forward and peered over.

  The ship – he could not help thinking of it as that – had landed. It lay quietly on the vast expanse of open, untrodden snow that had once been a golf course, plainly visible between the tops of the pine trees that formed a row along the back of the store.

  Now that it was grounded, with trees providing reference, Starkman was utterly appalled by the size of the thing. It was easily a hundred meters wide, at least twice that in length, and half as much, perhaps, in height. It had landed at a slight angle to him, so that he could see the entire stern and part of the left side. He had a good view of what were surely immense exhaust ports, though he had seen no evidence at all of any exhaust while the thing was in flight. He remembered movies he had seen as a child and books he had read since, and had no doubt what he was looking at.

  This, he was convinced, had to be a starship.

  He backed down the snow toward the edge of the roof, then lowered himself down to the drifts below and let himself slide down toward the store windows. He lay there on his back for a long moment, staring unseeing at the announcement of “whole fryers $1.89 kg.” as he let it sink in what he had just seen.

  Damn, he thought, a starship; people from another star system. Why hadn't they come twenty years ago, before the weather changed and the snows came?

  The first doubts began to seep in. How could a starship be here? Wouldn't they have landed somewhere warmer, where there were still signs of civilization? He was sure that there must be civilization somewhere in the tropics. And what were the odds that he, himself, would just happen to be the only human present at the landing of the first starship to reach Earth?

  Ignoring the sudden guess that maybe it wasn't the first, he decided that he must consider all the possibilities, one of which was that this thing was merely a new sort of atmospheric craft – or even a spaceship – built in some southern country untouched by the ice age. The more he thought about it the more he convinced himself that that must be the case; they were undoubtedly searching the northern countries for survivors such as himself, offering to take them to South America or the South Pacific or wherever it was still warm.

  The very resemblance of the ship to starships in old movies suddenly struck him as strong evidence against its extraterrestrial origin; it was just too familiar, too human in its design.

  But its size – why would a ship searching for survivors be so huge?

  Other theories crowded into his mind; perhaps the ship was a self-contained community, landed to replenish its stocks of water and raw materials. Perhaps it was a warship taking a circuitous route from one combatant in a tropical war to the other, hoping to avoid detection; the smooth surface might be reflective armor against laser weapons or radar detection. Perhaps it was a shipload of undesirables being exiled to the frozen wastes.

  And in any of these cases, what should he do about it? Should he go to greet the new arrivals, or flee for his life?

  He resolved, after some thought, on a compromise; he would scout out the ship, as cautiously as he could, and keep a careful watch on it. First and foremost, he wanted to see what its crew looked like. Despite the misconceptions of science-fiction writers, he was quite certain that alien beings would necessarily look alien. He was convinced that the theory of parallel evolution was garbage; he had studied genetics in school, and knew that the odds against the same long series of accidents of evolution occurring twice were astronomical, even if the planet in question had conditions identical to Earth in all respects – a very dubious proposition in itself. If the crew of the starship – or rather, of the ship – looked human, then they were human, and merely from some surprisingly advanced culture in the south, not from another star.

  If they were aliens – the idea seemed much less likely with every passing second – he would flee, probably heading south to try to contact some sort of authority equipped to deal with such a thing. At any rate, some sort of authority was wanted, though he doubted that anyone would be equipped to handle something like first contact with aliens. He was not about to take such an immense responsibility and risk upon himself.

  If they were humans he would watch them closely, assess their behavior, and decide what to do when he had some idea of who and what they were.

  This decided, he got to his feet, turned, and started up the drift again. A pace short of the top he froze, looking out across the snow of the empty parking lot.

  His footprints, overlaid upon each other, made a clear, straight mark pointing him out to anyone who cared to look.

  He hadn't worried about enemies in years; he hadn't needed to. The last lingering holdouts besides himself had given up almost a decade ago, after the second year when the snow never melted in the summer. For a year or two after that he had feared that others might turn up, coming from cities farther north or spreading out from towns where supplies had been exhausted. They hadn't come. For a year or two after that, when the solitude became oppressive, he had hoped that others would come; they still hadn't. Finally he had simply forgotten the whole subject. For years he had made no attempt at stealth in his comings and goings, since there had manifestly been no need to take the trouble.

  Now, finally, someone – or something – had come. These were not the stragglers and misfits he had expected, traveling on foot or riding patched-together snowmobiles and armed at most with nothing more powerful than an automatic rifle. Whoever commanded this craft showed every sign of having technological resources beyond anything he had ever heard of, and the size of the thing suggested large numbers of people aboard. He was not going to chase these people off with the battered hunting rifle and meager supply of ammunition that he kept at home.

  He knew that he had better hope they were friendly. If they were actively hostile he would want to start running fast and hiding well. He wished that the warm spell were over, so that fresh snow would come and cover his trail.

  At the present, though, his trail was there, and there was nothing he could do about it. The newcomers might well be friendly or at least neutral, and he was not going to carry caution to the extreme of fleeing without further investigation; he was comfortable in his present home and did not care to be chased out of it needlessly. Therefore, the best course was to get a look at the ship and learn what he could. He began trying to devise a way he could watch it without making his presence known or too easily discovered.

  He would want to get away from the trail of footsteps without making new ones just as obvious; that was easy enough, he decided after a moment's thought. He could just climb up on the roof of the building, as he had before; the ship's crew might well not think to look up there.