City of Pearl

by Karen Traviss

  Shan had expected more; more of what, she wasn’t sure, but she had expected more of it. The group simply picked up their mugs and sipped distractedly. She had the feeling they would wait for her to go before reacting. She tended to have that effect on people. She turned to leave.

  Eddie intercepted her. “I know this isn’t a good time to ask you, but you know I’m a trained anthropologist, don’t you? So I might be able to help with contact.”

  “Thank you. I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “Can I file this story now?”

  She considered it. “Go ahead. It’ll be twenty-five years before anyone sees it.”

  “Happy New Year, Superintendent,” he called after her. She wondered if that last reminder of their isolation had been a little brutal.

  Too bad, she decided.

  Lindsay briefed the marines carefully. They were not to let the payload take any live samples or damage anything, not even a leaf. Rock was okay. As long as they were sure it was rock, that was.

  “How will we know, Boss?” Barencoin asked. He was dark enough never to look clean-shaven; a few nicks on his cheek were witness to a recent attempt to keep the beard under control with an unfamiliar mechanical razor. “We haven’t a clue how they do their work. We didn’t train for that.”

  “Well, improvise. If they pick anything up, they put it back,” Lindsay said. “Haven’t you heard the countryside code? Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories.” The rest of the detachment laughed heartily. “Seriously, they mustn’t kill or damage anything. That includes picking plants. Frankland says they can do non-invasive scans.”

  “Yeah, I heard. The payload said she was mad. I reckon we’re going to have our hands full enforcing that.”

  “I can understand they’re hacked off at not being allowed to run loose and take what they like. But the situation’s different now. We’re in a potential war zone, and two of the hostiles have space travel and probably know where Earth is. I don’t have to draw you a picture and color it in, do I?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Get to it, then.”

  If only it had been that simple. Rayat, the pharmacologist, was already engaged in a quiet argument with Sam. He wanted to try to propagate any pharmaceutically interesting plant he came across. Sam was refusing. The two men stood very close to each other, almost head-to-head at the top of the main ramp down into the colony.

  “I don’t see how propagating a plant harms it,” Rayat said. “I didn’t come twenty-five light-years to take pictures.”

  “This is still taking live samples,” Sam persisted.

  “How am I supposed to work? Painting watercolors of new plants went out with Tradescant. We need to examine them.”

  Lindsay made a deliberately noisy approach towards the two men. It didn’t seem to distract them from their confrontation. She had to step in.

  “Dr. Rayat, perhaps you’d like to gather your colleagues and meet me in the mess hall,” she said. “I’ll be happy to brief you all on the procedures we’ve agreed to follow.”

  Rayat gave her a look that said he had not been consulted on any agreement. Civvies thought everything was up for negotiation. She wanted to disabuse him of that notion very quickly.

  “Ten minutes,” she said, and withheld the please with relish. She didn’t care for Rayat.

  In the mess hall, all eight payload were sitting quietly at the two long tables with varying degrees of resentment on their faces. Shan was already there, her backside perched on the edge of one of the storage bins, arms folded across her chest. She was still wearing that multipocketed vest over her fatigues, and there was a definite metallic composite object visible from beneath it. She was armed. Given the instruction to be discreet about weaponry, Lindsay thought it was a singularly provocative gesture but said nothing. Shan acknowledged her with a nod.

  “We’re all here, then,” Lindsay said.

  “Yes, miss,” said Champciaux, and some of them laughed. If he’d had a full head of hair he would have been handsome, she decided. “Present.”

  “Okay, then, let me outline the agreement to you. It doesn’t mean you can’t derive some worthwhile data from this mission. The native species and their allies here appear to be very sensitive indeed about taking biological samples, so we have to respect that. You can observe what you need to, and the, er, wess’har representative—that’s our alien neighbor—has agreed to supply data on native flora and fauna.”

  “What sort of data?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll find out.”

  “Can we go out into the natural habitat yet, though?”

  “Soon. But you will have an escort with you at all times.”

  “For our safety?”

  Shan stood upright with a deliberate slowness and walked across to stand near Lindsay, but she said nothing.

  “To ensure you don’t breach te guidelines and to reassure our hosts,” Lindsay said, picking up from the pause. “I appreciate it’s a very restrictive way of working, but our safety could depend on it.”

  Rayat and Hugel exchanged glances. “We’ve come 150 trillion miles to a unique habitat. Don’t you think we need to achieve more than to see a few picture postcards?”

  Shan cut in. “Okay, Dr. Rayat, what do you want to find out? The pharmaceutical value of native plants? There’s a database of chemical compounds you can access.” She took her swiss from her pocket, flicked a pin and a plasma screen spread into life between two cursors extruding from one edge. She read something from it. “I have here a summary of a natural history database that shows you just about everything on the planet that’s of note.”

  Rayat wasn’t giving up. “Who decided what’s of note?”

  “The intelligent species here. No point rushing things.” She rocked back on her heels a few times as she spoke, arms folded across her chest. Her forearms were hard muscle, and obviously not acquired by playing tennis. “On this world, the dominant philosophy is non-interference. As I understand it, the surface is pretty much run by the wess’har, so they’re the people to humor first. They’re like vegans. They make no use whatsoever of other species beyond food plants, and they have no tolerance of anyone who does. The colonists are wholly vegan too. You have to rethink the way you work if we’re to achieve our mutual objectives.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Rayat demanded.

  “I want to get out of here without making new enemies. You want to get out of here with knowledge you can turn into money. I also want to get out of here without having to cart you back in a body bag, Dr. Rayat. Do you grasp that concept?”

  “You’re talking as if these wess’har are dangerous.”

  “They are. If you need supporting evidence for that, I can show you a site where there was once a city. It’s not there now. It didn’t fall into ruin. They erased it. Just think that one over.”

  Shan had a way of seeming enormously threatening just by lowering her voice. Rayat dropped his head and Hugel glanced away, clearly embarrassed. Lindsay fumed silently. Shan should have told her about the military risk. It wasn’t something to lob into a casual briefing and leave her looking like a fool.

  Shan looked around the group. “We’re used to life being plant or animal. It’s not that clear-cut here. I don’t want you pissing off the natives by cutting a chunk from what you think is a radish and they think is a sentient animal. I’m sure you can see the potential for misunderstanding. Any questions?” There was silence. She turned to Lindsay. “I’m done here, Commander.”

  Lindsay managed a nod. And this was the woman she was supposed to tell that she was pregnant. She watched her disappear out the door and wondered how the hell she ever would.

  The mission party was now ready to venture out, two weeks after landing. The payload had their plans drawn up and each was rostered with a marine overseer. The marines were amused at having to enforce the sanctity of the local flora and fauna; one of them had carefully stenciled PARK KEEPER’S HUT on the lintel
over the entrance to their quarters. Other than that, they were taking the role as seriously as if it had been a beach landing. Shan found Mart Barencoin and Ismat Qureshi poring over a guide to biology field practice. It was disturbing to watch them reading off the screens embedded in their palms. They looked like earnest fortune-tellers.

  “You’ll be a PhD at the end of this deployment,” Shan said.

  “Got to know what they’re doing, ma’am,” said Qureshi, and went back to her studies on headspace capture and noninvasive tissue sampling. “No risks, right?”

  “No risks,” Shan agreed.

  She began walking the length of the perimeter, which was not a fence but had every sense of being one. Even Champciaux, who had plenty of rock to occupy him, had spent the last three days trying to establish how it worked and exactly what it did. Occasionally Shan would reach out her hand to feel a charge in the air. It raised the hairs on her arm, reminding her of the barrier keeping the two ecologies apart.

  As she walked, she saw a camouflage uniform in the distance. It resolved into Adrian Bennett. Maybe he hadn’t been prepared for clothing that needed to blend into an orange-and-blue terrain. In his jungle camo he was as conspicuous as a flare.

  “I thought you wore that chameleon fabric these days,” she said.

  “Good day, ma’am.” He always saluted her. When he raised his arm, she could see the bioscreen in his palm, looking unhealthily translucent in the daylight, and she averted her eyes. Even if it wasn’t recording, it felt intrusive. And if you had that much biotech grafted into you, were you really human anymore? She dismissed the thought. “Haven’t activated it. Thought it looked a bit aggressive, trying to conceal yourself here.” He pressed his palm against his breast pocket and the jungle greens danced indecisively between shades before settling into a random mottling of blue and amber. “See? It’s not my color.”

  The suit faded back into its default green. For a moment he looked uncertain, not quite the invulnerable booty she expected, and stood awkwardly still. Shan broke the silence more out of embarrassment than a wish for conversation.

  “What’s your speciality, Sergeant?”

  “Mountain and arctic, ma’am.”

  “Out of luck here, then.”

  “Feels like mountain, though.” He gave her an anxious smile and they began walking back towards the camp. “And it is extreme.”

  “How do you feel about serving under a commander of a different uniform?”

  “No problem. We’ve worked with civilian police loads at times. Anti-terrorism, humanitarian aid, evacuation—”

  “I meant Commander Neville.”

  “We always work with the navy, ma’am. Goes back a long time. A sort of miniature ship, if you like. Navy commands it, drives the thing, deploys us. No different here, except we were all selected for multiple specialities on account of the limited logistics. I’m pilot-trained. Qureshi’s a comms specialist as well as EOD. And so on.”

  “E.O.D.?”

  “Bomb disposal.”

  “Lovely. Let’s hope that doesn’t come in handy. Just how tooled-up are you people?”

  “Multifunction ESF670 rifles, close-in defense and a bit of housekeeping ordnance.”

  “Which is?”

  “Grenades and plastic. For blowing holes, really. We weren’t kitted for a combat mission. Just general eventualities.”

  She must have looked dubious. Bennett laughed. He was a totally average man, and you had to look carefully to see just how hard-trained he was under that uniform. His hair was mid-brown and his eyes were dull hazel and he was mid-height, mid-build and totally forgettable. He struck her as slightly nervous, even afraid. But he was a marine, and Extreme Environment Warfare Cadre at that. You didn’t get that cap badge for embroidery. She treated him with due respect.

  “Must be frustrating. You came expecting to evacuate or recover bodies, right?”

  “There’s still plenty to do. Maintenance, cleaning, fitness, victualing—we’re okay.”

  “I think we all have to play it by ear.”

  “Never known an operation to go to plan yet, ma’am. Way of the world. That’s why they sent for us. It’s what we do. Anything and everything.”

  He set off down the perimeter at a steady pace and Shan watched him dwindle and disappear. He had his purpose, and so did the payload.

  She just wasn’t entirely sure what hers was now. She ambled on, letting her thoughts drift in case some SB memories surfaced, but there seemed to be little in the way of a mental itch there any longer. There was something, something important but not colossal in import, and she let it ride. So maybe this was all that had convinced her: Perault had played to her green side, and told her to save the last precious remnants of rain forests and chalk meadows and savannahs and coral reefs, a gene bank guarded by a bunch of religious nutters light-years from home.

  As missions went, it was a noble one, and one her parents would have applauded. It beat staying home to grow old. And as god-botherers went, these Christians seemed pretty sensible and tolerant.

  All she hoped was that the facts Perault had not known—the complexities of alien politics—would not get in the way. If they did, she would have to find another way to preserve Constantine’s legacy.

  12

  The problem with the gethes, the humans, is that they cannot differentiate between people. They say the planet belongs to the bezeri, yet they know the world also belongs to rockvelvets and udzas and a thousand others: it is as if they have to establish one people who have dominance in order to make sense of life. Their language is equally confusing. Who can believe what they say if every word has several meanings?

  SIYYAS BUR,

  Matriarch Historian

  Josh called at the compound next day unannounced. He could see knee-high structures the shape of old-fashioned skep hives at intervals across the grass, and walked up to one to inspect it. The thing looked like a nest of smooth bronze tubes studded with disks, and there was an opening at the top. As he moved round, it made a faint whirring sound. A rapid flash of light from it startled him.

  “It’s all right, sir, we’ve disabled it.” Soldiers. He hadn’t heard them come up behind him. One of them was a very dark young woman who looked far too slight for combat. She and her male companion had rifles slung on webbing across their chests. The weapons didn’t look much different from those he had seen in old videos. “Can we help you?”

  “What is it?” Josh asked, glancing away from the guns and back to the machine.

  “It’s a defense system. It just tells us if we have visitors.” She was not relaxed about it, that was for certain. Had he scared them? “I’ll take you to Superintendent Frankland.”

  He tore his attention from the defense hive and followed them to the collection of square green buildings standing conspicuously alone in the grass. Inside, the corridors were plain and polished, and the translucent walls gave the interior a sense of being under water.

  Frankland was on all fours in the mess. She was wiping the floor with a wad of cloth. The woman soldier stared at her, clearly taken aback. The superintendent didn’t look up.

  “Yes, Qureshi, what is it?”

  “Visitor, ma’am.”

  She knelt back on her heels and looked up at Josh. “Cozy, isn’t it?” she said. “Not quite home comforts.”

  “You clean floors?” he said.

  “There’s a rota.” She put the cloth aside and got to her feet. “I might as well be useful.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Qureshi and the other soldier disappeared without prompting. Frankland dried her hands on her pants and motioned Josh to sit down. Floor cleaning didn’t fit into his image of secular command—or, judging by their expressions, the soldiers’.

  “I’ve arranged for you to talk to one of the wess’har representatives,” he said.

  “Here?”

  “Probably best to meet in my house.”

  “What do I need to know beforehan
d?Anything to avoid?”

  “He’s used to humans. He speaks excellent English. He’s a little different from the rest of his people.”

  “Is there a greeting in wess’har that I can learn?”

  “He won’t expect that. We’re not physically equipped for some of the sounds anyway. We’ve known Aras for many years, and you can be completely honest with him. In fact, I would suggest that you are. Wess’har are a very precise people.” He got up to go; there seemed no point making small talk, although he was now intensely curious about this officer. “When he gets here, I will let you know.”

  Shan saw him to the entrance, but not before she had retrieved the cloth from the corner of the room. Josh turned at the doorway. “You’ve set up defenses,” he said.

  “The marines want a little security. But it’s just an alarm. They disabled the close-in cannon.”

  “I don’t think anyone will harm you here.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I told them to disable it.” She gave him a rueful smile. “It’s just that territorial dispute. It makes the military jumpy.”

  “The isenj? The wess’har would never let them land here again. You have only yourselves to fear.”

  Go, please go, he thought as he walked away. Go back home and say that it’s too much trouble to try to get a foothold here. Say it’s not economically viable. Just let us get on with what we have to do. Josh walked back the long way, through the patches of crops, picking his way between the newly sown beans that were already breaking through the soil. He could see James alongside his friends, chatting while they planted hemp. In fewer than a hundred days, they would be harvesting it.

  At that moment, he feared change more than death. He had never known which generation would ultimately be the one to restore Earth, but he had known this colony was not meant to be permanent from the day he was old enough to talk. Right then he wanted it to last forever. Who needed Earth? You could serve God and his creation anywhere.

  But it was the hand of the wess’har and not God’s that made it practical for them to live here. Without alien benefactors, the colony would have dwindled and died and the precious cargo of Earth’s species would have been lost. Faith was one thing; and maybe God had ordained the intervention of the wess’har. But it was wess’har technology they relied on nonetheless.