Mercurial Nights
by Gareth D Jones
Lieutenant Robbins stood patiently on the barren surface of Mercury and concentrated on what he wanted to say. He had to be very literal for the non-corporeal Mercurials to grasp any concept that he vocalised.
“Can you leave the surface of the planet?”
He could just make out the faint, shimmering white form through the darkness of the frozen night. It answered back in halting speech, an eerie voice entirely lacking in emotion, mimicking words he had used and constructing sentences of its own, broadcasting them back on his suit comm.
“What is surface?”
He sighed and made a brief note on his datapad. Days’ worth of interaction had not shed much light on the Mercurials. His theory was that their sense of dimension was based on magnetic fields rather than gravity. He gave a brief explanation of gravity and solid surfaces. In reply, the mercurial ascended a metre into the air.
The ground followed.
There was no quaking, no cracking of the surrounding surface. Robbins stared at the miniature plateau on which the mercurial now rested.
“How did you do that?” Even as he asked the question, he realised it was too nebulous to translate. Talking to the Mercurials was like playing twenty questions with a set of rules invented by a deranged philosopher.
“Can you make another hill there?” He pointed to a spot a safe distance away and watched carefully. The ground did not move; it was just suddenly shaped differently.
“You change in your lander,” the being said simply.
It’s comparing changing the fabric of matter to us changing our clothes!
“Show me again.”
“I showed.”
He had not managed to get a Mercurial to expand on an explanation of anything in the two weeks he had spent with them. The entities apparently thought once was enough. Whenever he wanted something explained further, he had to get another of the crew to ask. That was a challenge in itself. They were engineers, geologists, chemists. They appreciated the Mercurials as a phenomenon, but their mission was to look for practical resources. None of them had the patience to struggle through a conversation with the natives.
At Robbins’ hail, Chief Sanders, the engineer, and Lieutenant Mistry, the pilot/medic donned their suits in no particular haste and joined him outside the barge-shaped lander. He explained the Mercurial’s apparent ability to conjure mass from nothing. The shimmering form was still in place atop the small mound of rock.
Chief Sanders asked for a full English fry-up. The Mercurial faithfully reproduced an authentic breakfast complete with hash browns, eggs, fried bread, tomatoes, beans, mushrooms, sausages, and bacon. The breakfast froze on the harsh plains of Mercury.
“Chief,” Robbins snapped, “we’re exploring a scientific marvel, not stuffing our faces!”
“I’m a practical man.” The chief shrugged and patted his stomach. “We’ve found nothing else worthwhile up here.”
Lieutenant Mistry made sure she specified that her roast dinner should appear on the table inside the lander so she could actually eat it. Robbins shook his head in despair.
“What a waste!” Chief Sanders grumbled when they were back inside. “I could have asked it to make anything!”
They watched Mistry enjoying her meal.
“If we could take them back to Earth. . .”
Mistry paused mid-chew and looked at him thoughtfully. She swallowed. “Now, what would that be worth?”
“You can’t capture them,” Robbins protested.
“Don’t worry,” Chief Sanders said, “I’ll find a way.”
“That’s not what I mean!” Robbins looked at each of his six fellow crewmembers in turn. “They’re sentient beings!”
His protests fell on deaf ears as they began to discuss how they could solve the containment problem.
The crew, including the commander, deferred to Sanders’ engineering expertise. According to a nod or a shake of his head items were taken or rejected from the stores. He cannibalised the sheaths of several spent power cells to create a magnetic containment flask, working with the theories that Robbins had developed. A magnetic inducer would funnel the mercurial’s energy field into the flask.
As the work continued, Robbins slipped unnoticed into his vacuum suit and went outside. Not far from the ship he encountered one of the ethereal beings.
“They want to capture you,” he warned, “to take you to Earth.”
The floating agglomeration of energy did not seem to comprehend.
“Inside a bottle and taken to Earth. How is this different?”
Never had Robbins felt so frustrated at the gulf in communication.
“If you could only make me like you, just for one day. . .”
Robbins did not like it at all. Without the comforting presence of a space suit he felt horribly exposed. With no physical body he felt utterly bereft of any reference points. He could ‘see’ in 360 degrees, in a grainy image that contained more than the colours he was used to, but which sharpened when he focused on any one spot. For a while he went into a blind panic, unable to even run around screaming. After several hours, when he had calmed down and grown slightly more accustomed to a non-corporeal existence, he realised the futility of his attempt. Physically he was now a Mercurial, but his mind was still human. He was no more able to communicate complex ideas than he had been before. He asked to be changed back to human, but was simply ignored.
Two astronauts emerged from the ship, armed with the containment flask and magnetic induction field generator. Robbins scooted out of the way as his crewmates started the hunt. They spent two hours fruitlessly searching for natives before returning to the lander. Robbins drifted back to await the end of his twenty-four hour ordeal. The time came and went, marked on the large digital clock seen through a welcoming view port. After a while he discovered he could see through the hull if he wished. Two of the crew came out for the second day of the hunt. He wondered whether they were also searching for him.
A short time later, a lone Mercurial drifted by. Robbins confronted the serene being, demanding to know why he had not returned to human form. He could not comprehend how he was communicating, he just was. It seemed puzzled, explaining that a day would not be over for quite some time. A feeling of horror diffused through Robbins’ awareness. A Mercurial day. He had not specified a twenty-four hour day. There were still 175 Earth days to go before Mercury completed a day. Had he been able, he would have broken down and cried.
Could he live 175 days like this, alone on Mercury? The ship would be long gone by then and he would be left alone, unable to survive in human form.
Chief Sanders approached, looking back and forth at the two of them, his determination to take back one of the beings evident on his face. Slowly, he raised the dual-pronged form of the inducer. Robbins drifted forward into its welcoming embrace.
Gareth’s stories have been published in many venues, including Nature and Cosmos magazines, and in over twenty languages.
Smart piece of writing this with a real old school feel to it. Genuine pleasure to read.
I found the denouement predictable, unfortunately. Overall, the story needed to be expanded on. We get a very superficial idea of the “Mercurials”, without the slightest explanation of how they could translate your protagonist into one of them. After all, you didn’t say they could trasmute matter, did you?
Fortunately, nobody’s feelings were ever hurt by a predictable denouement.
I found this tale thoroughly engaging. The idea of the necessity of the “exactness” of the verbal interplay made me think of the old stories about Genies and granting wishes (where the MC always gets screwed because he never can ask for something without suffering an unseen consequence). Nonetheless, this idea was told well in this story. Great read. Four big stars from me….
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