Message from Gondwana

By David Wiley

A corporation, Alchemistica, sends a team to Gondwana, a planet covered with a thick jungle. The planet is perfect for pharmaceutical prospecting, full of exotic vegetation loaded with even stranger chemical compounds that may make Alchemistica rich or kill the prospecting team or both, it is all the same to their corporate bosses. The newest member of the team, biochemist Lani Callis, wants to impress the team's veterans on her first prospecting trip, but she must overcome her own limitations to do so. Alchemistica hired Lani on the strength of how well she did on a holographic video game, not on how well she relates to others. She must learn to communicate to survive, for, as the human team studies Gondwana, it becomes apparent that the planet is also studying humans and the two do not speak the same language.

Authors note: Message from Gondwana is a short novella set in the same universe as the Eichi Testaments, which although well in the future, still bears all too many similarities to the current humanverse, especially the pursuit of profit. Humanity has spread across a hundred worlds, united by the Second Galactic Empire, an authoritarian Church Universal, and the corporations or kartels. Message from Gondwana takes place some seventy years before the main story arc of the Eichi Testament series. Although categorized as hard science fiction, the science in Gondwana is less about physics and rayguns than it is biology and genetics—although a laser karbine does come in handy from time to time. The novella also shows the writing style of David Wiley, including a flawed, but strong female protagonist, plenty of sharp dialog, some romance (how can being stuck on a planet of lush jungles not be romantic—unless it is because that jungle wants to kill you?), and characters getting themselves out of sticky situations (usually) by their wits and not just with a bigger gun or through newly-discovered superpowers. Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Wiley
• Release date: Jul 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311967336

David Wiley

David Wiley is a pseudonym for Dave Felstul. By day I am a scientist who lives in Oregon. I was worried that people would have trouble remembering, spelling, or pronouncing my given name, so I decided to adopt the name of a childhood hero, Wile E. Coyote, for my pen name.I wanted to be a writer from an early age. After being unduly influenced by the first Apollo mission with Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the moon in 1969, there was never any real choice as to my area of writing, science fiction. This was predictably followed by many early stories, lavishly illustrated with spaceships, deathrays, and aliens.Some of us outgrow our dreams, others merely postpone them.I did combine my love of science and writing in several technical journalism jobs—including for a computer magazine where I not so presciently proclaimed that "the new Microsoft Word and Microsoft mouse could do a few interesting things, but were not as good as existing products and would never work well together."After realizing that my options in science journalism were limited, I stuck with the science half of the equation for many years. Only recently am I beginning to realize that deferred dream of spaceships, deathrays, and aliens. Although it is debatable whether the humor has improved since those early efforts, the science has hopefully done so.My science background has certainly pushed me towards the hard science fiction genre, but I have a definite bent towards biology and not just physics. I want to explore what happens when future technology meets real life. How would a far-flung galactic civilization maintain a common culture or genetics? Will a raygun work in a downpour? Will we have holographic assistants like the doctor in Star Trek Voyager or will the holos be used for advertising shills instead? Unfortunately, I know which one my money and those of the corporations will likely be on.I am exploring these ideas in books set in the Eichi Testaments Universe, Make No Martyrs, Message from Gondwana, and others as they make it through the review process.To conclude, my hero, Wile E Coyote had a business card. If you think about it, the card is perfect for a science fiction writer. "Wile E. Coyote, Genius, Have Brain – Will Travel." Who knows where our imaginations can take us? Maybe one day Acme will even sell a rocket ship that works!

Book preview

Message from Gondwana

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A Novella from the Eichi Testaments Universe

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By David Wiley

Message from Gondwana

David Wiley

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 David Felstul

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

Epilogue

Excerpt from Make No Martyrs

CHAPTER 1

The machine burbled as Lani's gloved hand grabbed another bunch of leaves for analysis. Her scream did nothing to disturb the machine's contented hum. A snake! A blaggin' snake, somebody—hold it. Bax? Bax! Get your evil butt in here!

A handsome face, with blue eyes so wide-eyed innocent that even the devil would not trust him, peered around the corner. A problem, Lani?

Damn right there's a problem. There are no snakes on Gondwana, nothing larger than an insect, so how'd one get in my sample? Come to think of it, she poked carefully at the inert serpent. You made this in the fabricator, didn't you? How did you get the scales to look like—Um, thanks for this latest batch of leaves. You were right, this plant is remarkably free of epiphytes. Her hand swept the ersatz snake into the bin under the lab bench as a tall, severe woman came around the corner. Thank the Spirit, Hermea Jonze insisted on wearing heels you could hear coming from a kilometer away.

A problem, Miz Callis? I thought I heard a scream.

Lani glared at Bax, hoping he would burst into flame, the hotter the better. He winked at her before beating a retreat. No, Professor Jonze, no problem. A sampling tube just dropped is all. Startled me. Goddard, but she was terrible at lying.

That caused you to scream? The dark-skinned woman did not sound at all convinced. Take more care, okay? We are not exactly next to the Laboratory Glassware Bazaar now, are we?

Lani smiled faintly, since it seemed to be expected. Coming from old Jonze, the leader of the Alchemistica prospecting team, that comment was a side-splitting effort at humor. After the percussion of her boss' bootheels faded back down the corridor, Lani pulled the snake out of the bin. The reptile was undeniably a work of art, the pattern of iridescent scales on the back, the black eyes, and the open mouth with fangs. It even had the right heft. If Bax spent half as much effort on his job of collecting specimens as he did on thinking up practical jokes to play on her. He had been doing it since she first set foot on the ship that had brought them here. At first she thought he was making fun of the newbie. Then she thought it was because she was the only young and unattached female on board. Now she was just confused.

What in Marx was an outgoing guy like Bax doing running around the jungle on a planet in the middle of nowhere? Probably the same thing as she was; it was a job, her first. Bax probably had ten or twenty prospecting expeditions under his belt. Most people were not exactly sure what pharma prospecting involved, she smiled remembering trying to explain it to her parents. It was painstaking, dirty, and sweaty, light years from civilization, but unlike the samples they collected, jobs like this did not grow on trees and this one would not last long if Lani did not get back to work on analyzing the bits and pieces of vegetation that Bax and the others had collected in hopes of finding a valuable drug. She smiled and coiled the snake up on the shelf above her workstation.

She ground up the next sample of leaves for the machine to analyze. A small bin opened to receive the sample. She stuffed the waiting mouth. The eager little analytical formulizer that she had named Alfie sat on her lab bench. He would vaporize and analyze the chemical compounds in the vegetation samples, sharing the data with his big brother, the field laboratory's artificial intelligence, located down the hall. The AI's quantum hardware architecture, coupled with the latest expert system software supposedly made it unbeatable for comparing the molecular configuration of the samples with the millions of other chemical compounds stored in its databanks for potential pharmaceutical uses. Like most of their technology, the AI had enough of a personality to warrant a nickname, in this case, Hoover, derived from Hrvia Technologics, the quantum computer's manufacturer. When Hoover had finished his analysis, Alfie would then synthesize any compounds that Hoover or Lani thought worthwhile for further tests.

The other two biomolecular chemists on their expedition, both older Alchemistica veterans, blindly accepted Hoover's suggestions, but Lani found she liked matching wits with the quantum AI. Based on the trials she conducted on the sample tissue cultures with Alfie's help, Hoover's choices were beating hers six to four, but she took pride in keeping it that close. One of her long shots, an anti-amyloid compound that might be of use in warding off senility in senior citizens—a plus when the human lifespan often surpassed 150 years for those that could afford the latest rejuvenation drugs—was probably why Professor Jonze tolerated her experiments. Lani was just tracing a molecule whose atoms were arranged in an almost perfect corkscrew when a light strobed, followed by the clamor of the alarm.

Oh hell, she murmured, her concentration broken. Bax hurried past with Juls, one of the other field techs. They both carried flame throwers. Third time in as many days, she complained to their backs.

Aw, you're just jealous we get to go out, Juls shot back as they opened the hatch that led out of the lab.

She snorted. Juls had no idea how close the teasing struck home—or maybe he did. The planet's star, Draco IV, was a young, blue-white furnace, bigger and hotter than old Earth's Sol. Lani had fair, freckled skin that went well with her reddish hair but not with any outside exposure. Less than twenty minutes that first time outside and she had wound up with blisters over every exposed centimeter, which Bax smilingly offered to anoint with salve. It was not like she was missing anything, she told herself. No doubt the alarm was yet another plant making a fruitless effort to encroach upon Alchemistica's base.

The base consisted of a field laboratory on a hundred meter square that had been blasted out of the planet's nearly impenetrable jungle, a jungle which had given Gondwana its name after some long gone spot on Earth. The high energy beams blasting from the ship had not only burned off the vegetation, but had fused the underlying soil into a three meter thick glassy slab. A standard fusion plant was then delivered from orbit and it powered the remainder of the installation. A drill that punched a well down through the middle of the slab until it hit water, almost fifty meters down. A standard lab module that self-assembled various extruded polymers into the walls and roof of a fifty-meter square building. All of the internal furnishings that were fabricated and filled the internal compartments within a couple of days.

The finished lab module was typical for pharmaceutical prospecting, with living quarters for a team of a dozen. Individual quarters were a cramped three by four meters, which led to their inevitable nickname of hutches. There was also a larger common area that served as a combination galley, conference room, recreational area, and any other activity requiring more than the dozen square meters of a hutch. A secure electronics compartment next to the common area contained the hardware for Hoover and the base's communications equipment, while a storage room had enough supplies stuffed into it for a six-month stay. Not surprisingly, the analysis and testing facilities made up the largest single use of the field laboratory, about forty percent of the