The new novel from San Francisco sci-fi writer Annalee Newitz is a thought-provoking meditation on human nature, told from the perspective of an adventurous alien amoeba.
The new novel from San Francisco sci-fi writer Annalee Newitz is a thought-provoking meditation on human nature, told from the perspective of an adventurous alien amoeba.
Ed. note: Well before COYOTE launched, science journalist and novelist Annalee Newitz was on our list of dream contributors. We finally made that a reality when we published their much-discussed piece on the possibilities presented by a well-funded transit system.
Now, we’re proud to spotlight an excerpt of their latest fiction. ‘A Wall Is Also a Road,’ out Oct. 6 on Tor Books, is Newitz’s fifth novel. Turning sci-fi’s “first contact” trope on its head, its protagonist is an alien grad student who travels to a remote planet and discovers complex, multicellular life forms.
Gardenpath fought overwhelming dizziness, flattening and clinging to the ground as they flicked through several visual filters. At last they found one that blocked most radiation, and sent out a tentative eye. Starlight, now confined to a narrow band of spectrum, brought the world into focus.
Let the ground-truthing begin.
Pulling out a notebook, Gardenpath recorded their first pieces of data.
They were sprawled near the barren peak of a rocky mountain. In the distance they could see rolling hills and valleys, broken up by fields of rocks alongside a body of water and ... Wait. They upped the magnification on their scope. That ocean was really big. “Definitely a novel size for a body of water.” The notebook absorbed their words.
Exploring their landing site, they waded into a natural river of liquid water turbulent with gravitational forces. Fluid swirled around the galaxy-suit, eroding enough silt beneath their body that they sank slightly into the planet’s surface. For a moment they simply marveled at the idea of a world where no one needed to mine for water. Then they snapped back into research mode to plant sensors at the river’s edge.
Gravity in the Spigot was exhausting, even with a galaxysuit. Gardenpath mashed themself against the ground again, squeezing out six eyes and an arm to use the scope. Following the contours of the river down the mountain’s wrinkled topology, they picked out a few patches of what might be lichen or moss next to an oddly textured field of trace minerals. Could it be that they had already found life? Forgetting the ache in their limbs, Gardenpath rolled down the slope, sample containers in three arms and a molecular analyzer in another.
When they stopped to regain their balance, Gardenpath froze, lumpy with shock. The fields ... They were a riot of plants. Many kinds of plants, in as many colors and shapes as you might see in the resplendent library gardens. But that wasn’t all. There was a regularity to their growth patterns: They sprouted in tidy rows, as if by conscious design. Gardenpath stroked a leaf with a tentative arm, feeling its conjoined bodies opening for water. These were photosynthesizers, just like the people who lived on the far side of the Globe from the Rational People. Dark sacs of fluid — probably fruit — hung heavily from their stalks.
Gardenpath rooted around in the warm soil with three arms. At last they encountered a single-celled animal. They were a primitive prokaryote with no nucleus, less evolved than the eukaryotic Rational People. Could prokaryotes have arranged this field? A quick molecular reading revealed that some of the prokaryote’s neighbors were exchanging nitrogen with the plants. They could be farming. Gardenpath set the suit’s filters to pass a chemical signal.
“Hello? Do you understand me?” They paused. “My name is Gardenpath. I come from a university beyond the galactic plane.”
There was no response, other than the person’s gentle respiration: nutrients in, waste products out.
And then something crawled past Gardenpath’s questing arms. Without thinking, they snatched it up in a sample container. A long pink animal writhed inside, fighting to get free. Given their behavior, it would be unethical to keep this creature for more than a few moments. Gardenpath stretched an eye closer, trying to see the contours of their membrane.
What they saw was so unexpected they nearly dropped the container.
The animal was multicellular.
Multicellular plants were unsurprising; they were well-documented in Rational space. But an animal? Stretched between fascination and horror, Gardenpath stared. There were thousands, perhaps millions of life-forms bound together in this single invertebrate body, and it was moving around, like a mindless primeval cluster. Trembling, Gardenpath captured images in every possible wavelength, then let it go. It slithered away, diving back into the soil.
This planet wasn’t hosting mere chemical scribbles of proto-life, as they had hoped; these were full-blown ecosystems, packed with flora and fauna.
They had done it! There was life in the galactic plane! Nothing could stop them from passing the Fifth Exam! The planet rotated, its broiling star parading in triumph across the sky. Gardenpath watched its progress and dimpled with exhilaration.
Then reality set in. This was what Professor Arch had warned them about. To convince the haters, they would have to work five times harder than someone like Wainscot. Multicellular life was tricky to analyze at the best of times, and this appeared to be a world where every creature was more of a cluster than a normal animal. They would need to catalog a representative sample of millions of life-forms, along with deep descriptions of their environmental dependencies. There was so much to do, and their ultimate reward would probably be a failing grade on the First. Discovering nothing was bad, but discovering everything? That was worse.
And then Gardenpath remembered the stash of sweet flower mash tucked into their suit. Sipping it appreciatively, they thought of Oriel, who was probably learning all about agricultural labor on their planet right now. Feeling the now-familiar shape of their friend’s oath receptor buoyed them — along with the protein and carbohydrates — as they scouted for a temporary workspace location among the oddly symmetrical rows of multicellular plants.
The star was descending into the ocean — an incredible illusion caused by the planet’s rotation — and pale clouds made of ice arched across the brutal blue sky. Refracting its dimming light, the clouds filled the cosmos with dramatic orange and pink streaks. It was freakishly beautiful, like everything on this alien world. Then the planet fell into shadow and the Spigot exploded into visibility, tearing through the middle of the sky. They couldn’t see the Memory’s location from this latitude, but Gardenpath basked in the warm glow of the Globe and the ever-present stream of nutrients shooting out of the galaxy’s heart.
Rolling back to the sensors they planted earlier, they tried to focus on anything other than life. Subsurface readings showed that this planet had a liquid core beneath its solid shell. The two layers were in constant motion, stretching and cracking under the strain of an uneasy relationship.
And this mountain was their offspring, growing into a towering peak over thousands of generations of volcanic eruptions. Finally—a safe, uncontroversial observation that wouldn’t dent anyone’s membrane. There were plenty of tectonically active planets like this in the Globe; life often evolved near the vents where mineral-rich lava welled up to nourish the environment. The land around this mountain was probably fecund for the same reason.
When the local star reemerged to fill the eastern horizon with fire, there was a great disturbance in the atmosphere. Plants at the edge of the field shivered. Something was moving rapidly toward Gardenpath, and it was emitting vibrations that drummed against their body. Retreating to a rocky outcropping, they activated the galaxysuit’s camouflage.
A previously undocumented life-form, roughly Gardenpath’s current size, was propelling itself through the leaves on four arms. It had two eyes on one end of its trunk, nestled inside a thick layer of dead cells. Surreptitiously, they captured an image of it romping through the stalks and opening an aperture below its eyes to absorb fruit. Perhaps the chaotically arranged corpses on its membrane were some form of insulation? Or even a habitat?
Before the creature could consume anything else, two larger life-forms bumbled into view, sending out more jarring vibrations. These had a very different quality from what the romping beast had emitted; they were restricted to a narrow band of frequencies and contained complex, repeated phrases. Almost like a syntax. The two life-forms — each with four arms and two eyes, their oblong bodies draped in processed plant fibers — seemed to be engaged in a call-and-response pattern.
Time to propagate that dataset. Gardenpath cataloged the first life-form under the name Animal1 and the others became Animal2 and Animal2A. Their interactions resembled social behavior, which biologists considered impossible among multicellular animals. Yet another data point that would probably get them expelled. Animal2 pulled Animal1 away from the plants, and the group crashed and vibrated their way back down the mountain. A few leaves and pieces of crushed fruit were left on the ground in their wake. Carefully, Gardenpath put them in sample containers. No harm in collecting the dead.
It was easier to work with the planet turned away from its star, but annoyingly the starless phase grew shorter with each rotation. Their planet, Gardenpath realized, was spinning on a tilted axis. That meant more work in the blistering heat as it revolved around its nasty star.
After thirty of these increasingly enervating light periods, Gardenpath amassed a preliminary dataset of seven hundred life-forms, including plants, animals, and fungi. Some were prokaryotes, similar to the ones they had met in the field, and some were exactly like people, eukaryotes with their genetic material folded inside a nucleus. None seemed conscious. They responded to Gardenpath’s words with babble.
Animal2, however, was a fascinating contradiction. Each individual was a cluster whose size staggered the imagination, with over twenty trillion joined eukaryotes. They should be mindless. Yet they appeared to be functioning at a high level, possibly even consciously. And they were everywhere. Over the next 150 rotations, Gardenpath encountered 107 unique Animal2 organisms at ranges close enough to image and record. Hundreds more passed in the distance, often in the company of other animals.
No matter what they were doing, Animal2s emitted those nonrandom vibrations, using specialized apertures in the hardened bulbs atop their bodies.
The creatures also possessed a grotesque beauty, with bodies that seemed frozen in delighted elongation, eyes half swallowed by ecstasy. One paused for rest in Gardenpath’s work site at the top of the mountain. Camouflaged, Gardenpath got close enough to smell salt water wafting off its limbs. This Animal2 was a coppery color, dusted with tubes of dead cells that were nearly sky-black. Their vibration organ opened and closed like the stomata on a thirsty photosynthesizer. Gardenpath was tempted to touch them. And why shouldn’t they? Everything they were doing on this planet was going to get them in trouble anyway. They reached out a tentative arm. Perhaps sensing them, the Animal2 leapt up and tottered away on two arms.
A wave of loneliness sent deep wrinkles across Gardenpath’s membrane, tightening around their oath receptor. If only they could talk to Oriel. As they watched the Animal2, three others joined them downslope. They touched each other, winding arms like friends, making their curious vibrations as they ambled toward the ocean. Those creatures didn’t have a care in the world. Gardenpath wondered how it would feel to be completely untroubled, part of a simple community where they belonged. Once they had imagined the Memory would provide that for them. And maybe it still would. After they passed the Fifth.
Annalee Newitz will appear in conversation with M.M. Olivas on Oct. 6 at at Green Apple Books on the Park (1231 9th Ave., San Francisco). More info here.
Annalee Newitz is an award-winning Bay Area science journalist who also writes science fiction. They are the author of several books, including 'Automatic Noodle,' 'The Terraformers,' and 'Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.'
