Jack L. Chalker - Web of the chosen

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One

Ghosts are almost always malevolent and should be

given a clear berth.

This particular ghost was over four kilometers

long, a giant oval orbiting a planet circling a yellow

sun. Only one kind of spaceship was ever built that

large: a generation-ship from centuries past, before

Igor Kutzmanitov discovered how to bend space right

around the laws of relativity. A large number of such

ships had been launched in the twenty-first century,

carrying everything needed to start a new colony on

some hoped-for Earth-like planet out there in the void.

Most had been crewed by members of political or re-

ligious groups, searching for worlds of their own with

the dedication necessary to reach out across time and

space, knowing that they probably wouldn't live to see

the promised land themselves.

I punched up the silhouette on my information

screens. The ship's computer matched it—somewhat

to my surprise, since these scouts don't exactly have

the master library of Lubriana on them—as a Type

IV Generation Ship, launched between 2140 and

2165, probably by an American or West European

group, complement at start-off between two and three

hundred "with at least five master controllers in deep

freeze. As to the actual identity—well, the computer

said that seven such ships of that model were launched,

and all were Utopians of one sort or another. Be-

yond that it couldn't go.

I punched in some figures, curious as to how long

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The Web of the Chozen

the thing could have been parked here. The screen

told me that it couldn't have been here more than

fifteen or twenty years at the outside, perhaps less

than that.

That would mean that the odds were good that as

many as all five of the original masters would be still

alive.

I sighed and turned to look at the blue-green planet

on my port screens. I was paid to find Earth-like or

Terraformable worlds; if this one was taken, then

there were no gold stars for Bar Holliday on this

stop. Seiglein Corporation hardly needed to go at it

with a bunch of Utopians.

Even so, I would be expected to do a complete

report. There was always the slim possibility of a

profit in any discovery, even one like this, and while

I'd get a zero for the discovery I'd get pilloried but

good for failing to follow up.

I nipped open the communications lines and tried

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a scatter frequency that should have hit whatever

twenty-first-century communications device they were

using. The little red light on the panel lit up, announc-

ing a lock, and I called the ship, not really expecting

an answer. Even so, there might still be some people

on board—or a relay to ground. The ship was in

position for a relay if one there was.

"This is Seiglein Scout 2761XY," I called in my

most professional manner. "Come in, generation-

ship. Acknowledge, please."

There was only a hiss in return, and I repeated the

message several times until I was satisfied that the

store was empty.

Well, next step in the manual was to go aboard

and check things out personally. I didn't particularly

relish this idea since the damned thing was bigger

than some cities, but regulations were regulations,

and Seiglein's regulations book was Holy Writ.

The air lock on the big mother wasn't compatible,

of course. It wouldn't be. However, I was able to

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The Web of the Chozen

establish a magnetic link near the lock, giving me

only a meter or so to the lock itself, and I could play

with the frequencies until I hit one the lock would

recognize. In thirty minutes I was suited up, ready to

go, and had both locks open. I prayed their automatics

would still work; it would be hell to cut through the

bulkhead to get in.

Only seconds after I cleared the big ship's lock,

the door slid noiselessly shut behind me, and I felt

the pressure normalizing. I looked at the monitor

strapped to the outside of my pressure suit and saw

that the air was still good. That made me feel bet-

ter, and substantiated the argument that the ship hadn't

been here all that long.

Well, they'd cleaned it out but good. Only the

remains of the hydroponics tanks and the animal

breeders and such were left. The rooms were empty

of personal effects the crew and passengers would

take with them, and all was doom and gloom.

The lights still worked, though. As per regulations

the standby generators were on so that there was the

possibility, however slim, of a quick getaway for colo-

nists who ran into trouble.

There was no sign of anything like mutiny so they'd

made it intact. Things looked really good. I tried to get

at the bridge log to find out something about the crew

and its origin, but the controls were out of a museum;

I couldn't figure out how to work the damned com-

puter.

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There was, however, the usual plaque. Every crew

mounted one next to the ship's construction-data plate,

as if their new home were now a hallowed national

monument or something. Which, I suppose, it was—

to them.

The ship's data plate said it was the Peace Victory,

built by Corben Yards on Luna from parts made

in such-and-so U.S.A. and Canada, launched July 21,

2163—maybe the last of these babies, I thought.

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The Web of the Chozen

The commemorative plaque was a little more infor-

mative, although not much.

"Peace Victory," it read, "brings the Communards

to the place where they might found the society all

mankind justly craves but cannot find under the fascist

governments of Earth, no longer home. From this spot

began the fulfillment of mankind."

I searched my memory, but couldn't remember any-

thing about anybody called Communards. Communufs

I knew—we had lots of those—but Communards? A

variation, maybe? It was at times like these that I re-

gretted sleeping through my history classes all those

years—if the movement had been big enough and rich

enough to fund a generation-ship they must have been

mentioned there.

Oh, hell, I thought. Communard comes from com-

munity and common, meaning they were a group

society of some kind, mutual cooperation and all that,

sharing all. Probably a damned dull bunch—almost

certainly not a bar on the planet.

I made my way back down the empty corridors,

the soles of my pressure-suited feet clanging in the

atmosphere that procedure said I still couldn't breathe.

I got lost twice and had to take advantage of a couple

of You Are Here diagrams etched into the ship's

walls to make it back to the right lock.

It was there that I saw a sign I hadn't noticed on

entering, one that made me suddenly a bit more nerv-

ous and apprehensive.

On the door of the lock somebody had used a really

hard tool or something to scrawl a crude Don't.

Don't what? I wondered. Don't go? Don't follow?

Or was it just somebody's idea of a joke?

I looked around, but that's all there was. Thai

one lonely, crude Don't and nothing more.

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Well, I did anyway.

4

Two

Scouting is a lonely job, and I'm not the kind of person

who normally likes being cooped up and isolated. Oc-

casionally, both at home or on some other planet, peo-

ple ask me why I'm in this line of work.

It's really hard to explain. For one thing, there is

what I must call, for want of a better term, the flyer's

mentality. Something in me loves to fly these things,

loves to go out among the stars and see them the way

no one else sees them, to poke into esoteric corners

nobody imagined existed, to experience sights others

see only in fictionalized dramas. Maybe that's it, too—

there's a little of the hero and the ham in every pilot

I've ever known, even the milk-run ferryboat people.

And then, too, it's so damned dull back home. Now

they've got one's expected lifespan up past three

hundred years, more than two-thirds of it in near-

guaranteed good health, and the best free social ser-

vices around. Nobody has to work, and many don't.

They're bom, live their lives in the same community

where they're bom, in government fiats on the not

uncomfortable government dole, sitting around talk-

ing about all the big things they're going to do and

never get around to doing. Those who do something,

who like to push buttons and things and people around,

they're in the managerial government or in the nine

corporations that keep the resources flowing, provide

the services, and thereby run the lives of just about ev-

erybody.

I don't know why I turned out different. Bar 31-

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The Web of the Chozen

626-7645 Holliday, raised in Seiglein's Total Care

Center #31 along with a couple hundred other infants,

was always different. Like all kids, I dreamed—but

I dreamed beyond the time of settling, of puberty, and

the dole. I guess in some ways I never grew up. I

was good-looking, athletic, never any problems with

the opposite sex, but I was troubled by things that

others weren't. I'm not sure what—I often think of

those days and wonder. One thing is that I was never

satisfied with anything other than first place in the

things that interested me—particularly sports. I was

competitive, no doubt about that. And the Seiglein

Corp. loved that kind of oddball, encouraged him,

nurtured him, until they had put him right where they

wanted him.

Maybe that was it—here I was, out in the middle

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of nowhere, looking into places nobody else had

been before.

First.

To find some more resources for the billions on the

dole on the hundreds of worlds, to find more worlds

to house more billions who would turn them into more

plastic places.

That was a system?

I don't know. Somehow I always thought of Seiglein

and the other corporations as being in the vegetable-

growing business.

Well, I wasn't a vegetable, or, if I was, I was a

unique kind of vegetable.

Out here, the only one in charge of my welfare

and destiny was me, the way it used to be in the

old days, the way I'm convinced it ought to be.

I fed the data on the Peace Victory into the scout's

computer and stared again at that pretty world out

there. Looked a lot like Earth was supposed to look

—I'd never been there, but I'd seen pictures. Defi-

nitely the best prospect I'd ever found, and, dam-

mitall, somebody else found it first.

6

The Web of the Chozen

Well, next step was to survey the place in prepa-

ration for landing.

Those Communards, whatever they were, sounded

like ripe candidates for Seiglein Products.

Still, that scrawled Don't on the inside of the air

lock bothered me. Something kept nagging at me in-

side, and I decided that this one would be played safe.

Budget be damned, I was going to scout this place

as if there were nobody home.

I set up and shot a survey probe down to the planet.

Hell, I couldn't even name it—they'd already named

it somewhere. A little less immortality for Bar Holliday

this time around.

The probe broke, leveled off at about 10,000 meters,

and started doing a survey. The optics were quite good,

and the magnification was superb. I could find out

most of what I wanted to know from my command

chair.

The thing started shooting stop-frames every three

seconds, and I got a look at this world. It looked nice,

even sort of familiar. Four big continents with irregular

coastlines, huge blue oceans, vast plains broken by

large lakes and rivers, and a number of tall mountain

ranges. Even spotted a few volcanoes, so the place was

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still very much alive and active.

I hadn't seen any signs of human life as yet, but

that was to be expected. At this stage I wasn't look-

ing for people, and even if Peace Victory had been

parked for twenty years there wouldn't be very many

folks there yet, just some still getting along on the stuff

from the ship, others living a primitive, self-reliant life

in the best spots.

The place was warm; the south polar cap was

small despite calculations that said it was winter; in

summer, it probably vanished completely. The axial

tilt was about nine degrees, not enough to cause severe

seasons anyway. The mountains in both hemispheres

had snow, though it was a little more pronounced in

the southern hemisphere.

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The Web of the Chozen

I shifted the probe to the commercial spectrum, and

whistled. Lots of nice stuff down there still in the

ground—they sure had the resources for a nice little

world.

Heavy forests in the north and south, but a broad

band around the center, about forty degrees on either

side of the equator, seemed to be tropical savanna

broken only by the mountain ranges. North Pole tem-

perature -4° C. South Pole -9°, not bad at all. Equa-

tor was hot—over 50 degrees C, but the savannas

generally ranged from about 20 to a high of 29. Very

good.

They'd reached the land of milk and honey, all

right. I tried to imagine them as they first explored it,

probed it, realized what they had, and excitedly got

ready to found their perfect society or whatever it was.

If they had gods, they were definitely on their side.

I took a mid-savanna frame and held it, blew it up

in register until I could have seen a pinhead on the

plains.

Animals. Lots of them. Damned weird ones.

Took about two hours to get a really good, clear

shot of them, unblurred and in perspective, but when

I did I had to stare.

Now, I've been around a lot of the unknown uni-

verse. So far we haven't found any alien civilizations

or really intelligent beasties, but the animal and plant

life has been roughly logical. This place was so close

to Terranorm that I half expected to see the usual

animals—most of the plants did appear variations of

existing types the environment would produce ac-

cording to evolution's laws.

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But these—well, they looked like they'd been de-

signed by a committee that had debated what it was

to be and never really decided. The creatures were a

compromise.

Their heads were overlarge but somewhat human-

old, although rough-hewn. Long, thick whiskers, like

a cat's, drooped down almost to the ground. Their

8

The Web of the Chozen

ears—well, I'd seen donkeys in zoos, and that's about

the closest I can come. Huge, long, almost a meter

high, and they seemed to be able to turn them in-

dependently over at least a ninety-degree range. Two

horns, fairly long, rose out of their heads above the

eyes, terminating in flat membranes, purpose un-

known. The male's horns were grand—they curved

around once before straightening up again; the female's

were straight and slightly shorter. And those eyes—

weird. Jet black. No, I don't mean the pupils—the big

eyes were like obsidian, from lid to lid.

Their bodies were equally incongruous. Again I have

to go back to Earth animals I've seen in zoos and pic-

ture books. The body was like a giant kangaroo's, com-

plete with massive hind legs which ended, not in big

feet, but in large hooves, like horse's hooves. Their

forelimbs were very long, since then: bodies put them

at an angle, but very horselike.

And all of this ended in a large, flat bushy tail,

like a squirrel's, proportional to those bodies and fully

as long.

I put the probe on hold and started watching a

group of the beasts. They could stand erect, maybe

two meters or more tall, resting on that tail, but to

walk or eat they needed to be on all fours.

Did I say walk? Well, they hopped. Damnedest

thing anybody ever saw. They would kick off with

those hind legs and go real fast across the plain like a

kangaroo, then settle on those forelegs. They couldn't

walk as such—while the forelegs were independent of

each other, the rear ones were locked together, obvi-

ously had to move together.

Their genitals looked to be oversized versions of

the human type, but the females had no sign of

breasts—although two large breastplates on both

males and females suggested that they might once have

had them. Both sexes also had large pouches below

those plates, both carried young in them. Their bodies

9

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The Web of the Chozen

were covered by a greenish-blue fur, their faces a dark

brown.

They were herbivores for sure—they would kneel

and start chomping with great appetite on various

plants. Flat teeth, a side-to-side chewing motion, and

large, flat tongues.

I stared at them for what must have been hours,

wondering what could possibly produce such things.

What conditions would develop them that way?

They had no hands, no tentacles, so they had no

tools—yet they did have artifacts of a sort. I caught

a frame of something weird and blew it up.

It was a village.

Yes, a village, huts and all. All made out of some-

thing white and milky, like spider's web but looking

much, much tougher and stronger. These things lived

in them.

And as I watched, fascinated, I saw how they built

them. There seemed to be a flap in the tongue. They'd

pucker their mouths, and stick out the tongue, and

out would come stuff with the consistency of rope, but

like paste. They could build with it—very quickly, too,

I noted—and I couldn't imagine where the material to

make the stuff was coming from. A byproduct of the

grasses they ate, maybe?

Reluctantly I turned my attention to other animal

life. It was there, of course—some of it as strange-

looking as the herbivores, but much of it more con-

ventional. All around were birds, and insects, and

smaller animals of various kinds. None looked quite

right, but none looked as wrong as the chief creatures

of the plains.

The air check I'd made at the beginning showed

the world to be more humid than Terranonn, but that

was about it. Nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen there in nice

balance, just below normal—most of the deviation be-

ing extra hydrogen, which accounted for the wetter

climate—and inert gasses in essentially meaningless

fractional percentiles.

The Web of the Chozen

I could breathe the stuff without discomfort, except

that it would probably feel like a wet blanket. No des-

erts of more than a few thousand kilometers, all on the

lee side of mountains or on a few very high plateaus.

I dropped the probe for a complete sample, then

sterilized it except for the little specimen compart-

ment. Once back, it was put through its paces in a

vacuum chamber, probed, prodded, and analyzed much

as the colonists must have done.

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The usual types of microorganism. Nothing looked

threatening.

Next came the search for the colony itself.

I sent the probe back out, and did a complete

habitation survey. I found lots and lots of those web

villages, and lots and lots of herbivores, but no indica-

tion of any human habitation whatsoever. After almost

a day and night in probe status, I hadn't uncovered

the slightest sign that human beings had ever landed

on the planet.

Suddenly that scrawled word crept back into my

conscious mind.

I was about to scoot back to the nearest relay

station and get some advice—and maybe some heavy

scientific artillery—when I suddenly remembered that

twenty-first-century ships used nuclear fuel. Well, there

was a lot of uranium and such here, but if their ship

had landed, repeatedly landed, in a single spot I could

find it. I ran one last probe on that guess, and hit pay-

dirt.

The patterns were there, all right—big overlapping

circles of weak radiation, and an indication of a

small amount of something hot that was just about

what their power pack would be.

But no sign of people around anywhere, and no

sign of the ship that power pack should belong to.

I decided to get some sleep and continue when I

was refreshed. A mystery was here, deep and unusual,

and I knew that the odds were that I shouldn't try it

myself. Even so, it's in my nature to try any problem.

The Web of the Chozen

If I could solve this one I would have more Seiglein

feathers to add to my cap. Here was a challenge, and

I never could resist challenges.

I knew I'd go down in full suit and armor to take

a look.

But why did my mind insist on flashing that con-

tradictory scrawled message to me as I made that

decision?

Don't, it said.

The next day I sent down the bioprobe with a

nurd inside. A nurd is a small organism from one of

the Altarian planets that resembles nothing so much

as a little rubber ball. That's about all it is, too—oh,

not rubber, but it's biochemistry, while strange, is sim-

ple and the variables can be easily isolated. The things

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store in the deep freeze, too, and are susceptible to al-

most all diseases that might affect people—just about

the perfect lab specimen.

The probe landed near the radiation zone and

picked up some soil and air samples. The probe also

let the nurd drop, bounce, and then neatly caught it

again and popped it back inside. I immediately trig-

gered the takeoff sequence, and while the liftoff

friction sterilized the outside I ran the inner steriliza-

tion sequence so that only the tiny biological cham-

ber, now suspended in a vacuum, remained from the

planet.

Once back aboard, the automatic lab analyzed,

probed, and poked here and there. It took about an

hour to give some results.

The place was filthy with microorganisms, of course,

but none of them seemed able to survive in the nurd.

Nice. And normal. Rarely do the organisms of one

world have any real effect on those of another, unless

it's a lethal one. Only one organism, which was almost

unnoticed it was so microscopic, seemed to have any

compatibility factor at all with the nurd or with peo-

ple, and that was a very primitive virus of some sort.

12

The Web of the Chozen

Blown up several million times, it barely showed on

the screens. It didn't die or run from the nurd's cells,

but neither did it seem to have any effect on the little

ball-like creature. Like most of its type, it resembled a

small honeycomb. It did seem to be a fast grower—I

could see little sprouts off the ends of the colony slowly

inch their way up what might have been a fraction of

a micron—yes, it was that minute—and slowly form a

new little protocell. This was much more rapid than

anything I'd observed before—usually you can't see it

happening, you just come back later and more of them

have shown up—but after a few hours it seemed to

reach the limits of its growth in the nurd and turned

dormant. There was no effect on the nurd's tempera-

ture, biochemistry, or other vital functions, so it was

probably safe for me as well.

But then, that Communard colony would have done

much the same thing, been just as careful, and yet—

where was it?

Everything checked out, and so now came the last-

resort decision—turn for home and help, or go on

down myself. Something in me said repeatedly that I

should get out, but my stubborn, adventuring streak

took over. I had been challenged here—somewhere

down there should be a colony, thousands of people

by this time, maybe farms, roads, and the like. Even

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Jack L. Chalker - Web of the chosen

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