City of Pearl

by Karen Traviss

  She was scanning through the early history when a word caught her eye.

  The word was “Aras.”

  For a moment she wondered if the files were not in chronological order, and she checked more out of habit than curiosity. But they were indeed ordered, and the dates they referred to were more than 150 years ago. And still they referred to Aras.

  Her first rationalization was that Aras was a generic name for the wess’har. Then she rethought the premise. Could he be that old? There was nothing to say that human life-spans were the norm. In fact, that wasn’t even true of Earth species, so why should an alien not be centuries old? Nevertheless the thought gripped her, and for some reason she began to worry that the wess’har might suddenly become very interesting to the life-sciences people. She decided not to say anything until she had checked out the facts.

  She flicked through pictures at high speed. They were mostly of people, with an occasional shot of the fields, and every imaginable view of the building of St. Francis Church. She enlarged the shot and admired the inventive approach to scaffolding they had used when they built the vaulted ceiling. And then she spotted a creature she didn’t recognize in the background of one of the frames.

  It was hard to see, but it looked bipedal. It was the height of a man and had what looked like a long, tapering muzzle, nothing like the solid and broad Aras. Was this an isenj? Was this the species they wouldn’t now allow on the planet? And if it was, why had they accepted its company while they were building the church?

  Nothing here was going to be simple, she decided. She stood up, dusted down her trousers and began walking back to the settlement.

  She had to pass the open hatchway to the marines’ quarters on the way back to her cabin. Words wafted out in an indistinct buzz, and she wasn’t listening, but then a few words leaped out with sudden clarity. “You’re bloody sweet on her,” said Barencoin’s voice, teasing.

  “Piss off,” said a voice she recognized as Bennett’s. “I don’t want to hear that again.”

  Shame, Shan thought. But she smiled anyway.

  Eddie stepped into the tiny alcove in his cabin that was both toilet and shower and tried to freshen up. Expecting extreme conditions, the designers had allowed for two liters of water per shower. On the six-week familiarization program, granite-faced Royal Marine Color Sergeant Durcan had demonstrated how to cleanse the entire body, hair included, with the artful use of a substantial sponge and the minimum of water. They could, said the Color Sergeant, have done it with a plain pint, but as they were bloody soft civilians, they could have nearly four to lavish on themselves. He wasn’t a man who dealt in liters. Eddie was glad he hadn’t actually trained with the marines as his editor had suggested. The personal hygiene was tough enough.

  So the system was set up for two liters of water, even though there was plenty of fresh water on tap, thanks to the colony’s borrowed pipeline. Eddie resolved to find one of the engineer-trained marines, maybe that nice Susan Webster, and persuade them to adjust his shower.

  By the time he made it to the mess area, everyone was eating. Rayat sidled up to him while he tried to decide if the reconstituted egg would make him want to throw up again.

  “You’re going off camp this morning?” he asked, very quietly.

  “Certainly am, Doc. First foray.”

  “You’re the only person Frankland is letting out unescorted.”

  “That’s because I won’t stray too far. And I only take pictures.”

  Rayat lowered his voice still further. “If you were to come back with a few leaves stuck to your boots, you would let me know, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t be ungrateful.”

  Eddie looked him in the eye. “Don’t even ask. I’m not interested.”

  Eddie wondered how long it would be before another member of the payload—and he wasn’t payload, of course—asked him to sneak something back into camp. Shan would suspect they would ask, and he didn’t want to be grounded with the rest of them. Anyway, it was wrong. The rules had been spelled out to them. And he thought of those obliterated buildings and roads and isenj whose only memorial was a geophys scan of ghosts.

  He wanted very badly to know what the isenj looked like and who they were. But there was enough to occupy him while he waited for that opportunity to present itself.

  Eddie collected his kit and walked with difficulty out to the perimeter of the colony on the east side, to where he could stand in farmland and yet have a backdrop of orange trees and lavender undergrowth. The hike was agony. He didn’t care. He set his camera to follow him, and it hovered behind him like a large tame bee.

  “Tight mid-shot and pull out on but behind me,” he told it. He checked the shot on his handheld screen and moved a few meters to the right. That was better.

  “This may look like a chaotic cottage garden, a piece of land planted with some everyday crops,” he began. “But behind me, there is nothing remotely everyday about the landscape.” He paused for breath. “This is the second planet from Cavanagh’s Star, CS2, a planet so like Earth as to enable me to stand upright and breathe its air. Yes, I’m puffing a little, because that air isn’t as rich in oxygen, and the gravity is slightly higher than we’re accustomed to—but this is the nearest place to home that humans have found. And here is where an international group of devout Christians has built a colony, against all the odds. It’s also a planet with a violent history, a history of wars that wiped out whole cities…”

  He wasn’t at his slick best today, he knew that. He could tidy it up later in editing. It was a long time since he’d recorded anything that wasn’t live. Out here, not being fast didn’t matter. There was nobody else to beat him to air, nobody to scoop him. The luxury was so heady that he almost laughed out loud. He had a new world to himself. Sod Wiley, and sod the networks: whatever was happening Earthside when his transmission finally reached home, he would still be the first man to report from the surface of Cavanagh’s Star II.

  He rounded up the camera and reattached it to his headset, turning round slowly to work out the best angle. The orange pineapple-shaped trees were stunning. If anything said alien world, they did. Great flapping sheets of clear stuff flew at a majestic pace between them. What the hell were they? He recorded some voice-over expressing just that sentiment, and then thought about laying down a more scientific commentary later.

  By the time he got back to his cabin, he was uncertain whether his priority was to die quickly of his headache or to eat until he burst. All his body’s balances were still in disarray. Tired, it said. Eat, lie down, sleep. He ignored it and set up his edit suite.

  Suite was a grand term for it. The screen was a sheet of polymer 20 cm by 15 cm, easy to tack to a wall or spread on a table or lap. Eddie pulled down the flap set in the wall to accommodate a workstation and set the screen to a 45-degree angle, then pointed the bee cam at it and transferred the morning’s footage. Things somehow looked more real to him on screen than they did in the flesh.

  He already had the shape of the piece in his mind before he shot it. Now he tried the shots together, cutting, fading, deciding where the hypercaps would go, and then wondering how he was going to capture all that second-layer data from a system as archaic as Constantine’s. He could have made up all the background if it came to it, but he had his pride. This wasn’t just news. This was history. There were duties involved.

  And there was another thing missing. The native inhabitants must have had a name for the planet. Cavanagh’s Star II, CS2, was a geek’s designation, not a world, not a place on a map. He wanted something that would capture the essence of the place. Maybe Aras the Alien would oblige.

  The piece was running at nearly three minutes. He’d wanted to get that sub-menu in about the vanished city of the isenj. But maybe that could wait along with the geophys scans Champciaux was dithering over letting him transmit for “copyright reasons”—as if anyone was going to care who had breached it when they finally got back.

  It was still too speculative
, anyway. And it added forty-five seconds to a three-minute piece, a tad weighty by BBChan standards. So what? Nobody else was going to get the whole story before him. He cut it and dumped it in the gash file.

  16

  MEMO TO: Supt. FRANKLAND

  FROM: Dr. M. RAYAT

  I feel it is unwise to continue to allow Aras free access to the camp. I returned yesterday to find him in the clean room emptying the cryo store, and he has removed all the embryos and the stored rats. When I challenged him he became quite aggressive and lectured me on the abuse of other life-forms. While I admire his fluency, I must protest at this unwarranted interference with my work.

  Lindsay sat with Shan in the deserted mess hall, driven into the public areas by the sheer confinement of a cabin. The payload were out and about with their escorts. A cube of a room was no place for a meeting, not when you could look out of the front door and see a blue plain that stretched forever. It was a very large island indeed.

  “Can’t Rayat come and see me in person?” Shan said, and turned the swiss’s screen so that Lindsay could read the memo. “If I’d known he had animals in that box of tricks of his, I’d have smacked him one. He knows the rules here. What does he need rats for anyway? Don’t we have tissuevirtuality modeling?”

  Lindsay sat with carefully clasped hands on the table in front of her. “I gather it’s a backup. In case the virtuality is inconclusive.”

  “He’s a wanker.”

  “Right with you there, ma’am.” The two women looked at each other for a moment, locked in a brief but elusive moment of common purpose. “I say we should let Aras smack him one, as you put it.”

  “So he took the rats.”

  “Yes. In a packing crate. I didn’t think stopping him would be appropriate. Or possible.”

  “Yeah, he’s a big lad. Has it upset the other payload?”

  “Parekh was a little concerned, but she said she thought Rayat had it coming anyway. I wouldn’t worry.”

  The brief camaraderie brought on by the unlovable Rayat stalled. Lindsay sat with hands folded and waited in silence. It was as good a time as any.

  “We got off to a rotten start, I think,” said Shan, conciliatory and not meaning a word of it. “I know it must have been a hell of a shock to wake up and find me aboard. I wouldn’t have taken it any better than you. I’m sorry.” It was a cheap, easy word. She couldn’t understand why so many people couldn’t use it.

  Lindsay looked down at the tabletop as if taking her eyes from it would undo the fabric of the universe. “I didn’t help matters any by getting pregnant. But you’re quite a…quite a presence to adjust to.”

  “I’m a complete bastard and I’m entirely comfortable with that. But I do get the job done.”

  “I’ve never wanted to throttle anyone so much in my life.”

  “Not even Rayat?”

  Lindsay laughed uncomfortably. “He’s quite a uniting influence. That was a nice touch, sorting him and Paretti out. I learned a lot from that.”

  “But more chief petty officer than commissioned rank, eh?” Might as well lance all the boils, Shan thought. “Not what they taught you at the academy.”

  “I think that’s why the booties like you. You can be one of the lads too. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.”

  “Not appropriate for a naval officer. Compulsory for a copper, any rank. Saying fuck occasionally does help.”

  Lindsay’s thaw was turning into a flood. “I’ve got some of Eddie’s home brew. Want to try some?” She got up and took a five-liter water container from under the galley sink, and Shan wondered if she should have helped her carry it given her condition. But she didn’t. When Lindsay opened the cap, a yeasty sweet aroma wafted up.

  She poured the liquid into shatterproofs. “He’s getting better at it. This batch is almost transparent.”

  Shan held it up to the light. Alcohol was a sign of weakness, but Eddie’s beer seemed to have a high fiber content, so she relented and touched glasses with Lindsay in a grim toast.

  “Should you be drinking this in your condition?”

  Lindsay rubbed her belly fondly. “Kris says a little never hurts. And I think you could describe this stuff as self-limiting.” She gave her a sad smile. “There was a time when I thought you were just civilian ballast on this mission, but I was wrong. I apologize.”

  “Don’t confuse the art of damage limitation with professional competence. But thanks.”

  “We’re in a tight spot, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, but we’re going home in a while. In one piece, too.”

  “I believe you,” said Lindsay. She topped up the shatterproof and there was a telltale slop as a large and unidentified lump slipped out of the container. Shan hesitated and let it sink to the bottom, with no intention of actually drinking more than a few sips. “I think that’s what I’m saying, really. We—the detachment and I—trust you. We feel we can rely on you.”

  Poor Lindsay: she meant it sincerely and she clearly thought she was expressing solidarity. But it made Shan’s stomach churn. It was a degree of faith she didn’t want to inspire. She felt suddenly angry, and wanted to tell them all to sod off and take care of themselves instead of burdening her with their welfare. She’d never had anyone to make it all right, not her self-centered absent mother nor her daydreaming, idealistic and ultimately useless father, nor anyone except maybe her first sergeant when she was a probationer fresh out of conscription.

  I’m fed up being the only adult around, she thought. I want to be looked after for once. Her resentment threatened to erupt with a force magnified by a lifetime of suppression.

  She swallowed it again. “I’ll try not to let you down,” she said.

  Josh wasn’t at home. Shan skipped her usual courtesy call and headed for the next nearest center of authority in the colony, the school.

  “I’m looking for Josh or Aras,” she said to the first adult she could find. The woman was sweeping down the banked steps of a lecture theater that were cut into the rock. “Sorry to barge in unannounced.”

  The woman looked unconcerned and consulted the ancient console in front of the desk. “Second room on your left, that way,” she said, and went back to her cleaning. “Quite a popular venue today, I think.”

  Shan could hear and feel Aras’s voice before she reached the room, but nothing more. She was surprised to find herself face-to-face with at least fifty children. They were all gathered round a table in the center of the classroom, listening in perfect silence to Aras explaining the antics of a dozen or so rats that were zipping up and down the surface and pausing from time to time to stand on hind legs and sniff the air.

  The kids were transfixed. Their community held the most complete species gene bank Earth had assembled, and yet none of them had ever seen a live creature from their homeworld other than insects. To them, a rat was as magical as a unicorn.

  Aras looked up at her and beckoned her in. He cradled a beige rat in his hands and held it for a little girl to touch. The child hesitated, then placed two cautious fingers on the animal’s back. It turned to sniff her hand. She giggled.

  “Very cute,” said Shan. “Sorry about Rayat. Maybe we can discuss that later.”

  “I’ve asked the children to care for some of these people and I will look after the others.”

  “I’m sure ratkind will thank you for that.”

  Aras seemed to see no humor in the comment. He turned to the children. “I’ll be back to check you’re caring for them properly,” he said, and it was clear his word carried even greater weight than any human adult. The kids nodded solemnly. “Remember, keep them safe. Don’t let them out where the handhawks can get them.”

  Shan walked slowly back up the corridor, arms folded. Aras caught up with her, exuding that elusive sandalwood scent.

  “So, are you here to ask me to keep out of your compound?”

  “No. Fine by me. I said you were welcome any time, and Rayat knew the rules.”

  Aras op
ened his tunic a little and two whiskered faces, one black, one white, popped out and stared at her. “Aren’t they wonderful? They have little human hands. Look.” He placed a gloved finger under one of the rat’s paws. Shan didn’t want to think about hands that weren’t human: she could see that gorilla again. Help me, help me please. She shook it away.

  Aras twitched his finger and the rat gripped his glove. “See?Almost a thumb. I’ve named them Black and White for the time being—I’ve no idea how they identify themselves.”

  “You know what Rayat was going to do with them, don’t you?” It might have been a test of her attitude. Josh had advised total honesty, and right then it seemed completely obvious to act as an apologist. “One of those little ironies in the word ‘humane.’”

  “Yes, I know only too well. You think they’re disposable. Vermin.”

  “The only vermin I know has two legs.”

  “Josh said you would say that.”

  “Well, everyone knows my every thought. What you see is what you get.”

  At earlier meetings, Aras had seemed in complete and quiet control, almost intimidating. Now he appeared to drop his guard. He was distracted. “We don’t intrude on other races.”

  That explained why he called them people. His English was certainly good enough for that not to have been a slip of the tongue. She found it inexplicably touching and fought down a blush of embarrassment. Black scrambled back inside Aras’s tunic. “They seem to like you.”

  “I like them.”

  “May we talk later? Just general stuff.”

  “More questions? You as well as Eddie?”

  “I’d like to know more about wess’har, that’s all.”

  He paused, two rats folded to his chest. White was cleaning its face as if sitting in the arms of an alien was a perfectly natural place for a rodent to be. “Very well.”