by Nancy Kress
“These small Worlders cause their own sickness in just a few people,” Voratur boomed, “and that, too, we will heal with potions. And we will all be richer than Seuril Island!” Laughing, he thumped the dome again and went out the door, calling loudly for more pel.
The four humans looked at each other. Three, David realized in disgust. Gruber was asleep standing up, leaning against the painted wall. Asleep or passed out.
“You had no choice, Ahmed,” Ann said, in English.
“No,” Bazargan agreed. “I did not. Not unless I want to pull us out.”
“Pull us out?” David said. “You mean, leave? Over an allergy medicine?”
“Over avoidable biological contamination of the planet,” Bazargan said.
“You even considered leaving before we fully understand the shared-reality mechanism? The biggest boon to humanity ever?”
“Not now, David,” Ann said warningly. She watched Bazargan.
David subsided. But inside he seethed. The shortness of vision, the timidity of thought … What was wrong with these scientists? Were they that corrupted by the prissy stuffiness of publish-before-all?
Ann said, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Ahmed. Voratur accepted the idea of a clinical trial for antihistamines, a trial run by Reality and Atonement, before he even talked about it with the priests. Is that because he and the priests share reality so much that he already knows what they’ll say?”
“Probably,” Bazargan said. “But also because shared reality among the ruling classes, priests and heads of great households includes a complex system of ‘gifts’ that we would call bribes and kickbacks. I haven’t unraveled it all yet; it’s hard to do fieldwork when you can’t ask many questions. But don’t underestimate the priests, Ann. They hold enormous power on World, even though they can’t maneuver outside shared reality.”
“I don’t underestimate the priests,” David said. “I’ve said right along that they’re deadly parasites!”
“That’s not what I said,” Bazargan answered, and though his tone was calm as ever, something in it made David fall quiet.
Ann and Bazargan left, both supporting Gruber to his room. David lingered, even though he knew he should go back to Nafret. He was, after all, one of the boy’s two tutors. Under their temporary dome, the lifegivers buzzed angrily. Temporarily captive, temporarily kept from their true function.
But only temporarily.
EIGHT
ABOARD THE ZEUS
Syree Johnson and Rafael Peres waited in the docking bay as the light, enclosed gangway unfolded from the Zeus and extended toward the small ship seven meters away. Beside the Zeus the flyer looked like a kitten stalking a hippopotamus.
And “stalking” was the right word, Syree thought. If the flyer had brought good news, it would have given it by radio right after emerging from Space Tunnel #438. Instead, the flyer’s pilot had merely notified the Zeus of its presence, which the Zeus already knew of. The instant anything emerged from the space tunnel, a beacon sent an encoded description to the Zeus. The flyer’s request to approach and dock had taken fifty-six minutes to reach the Zeus, and the flyer itself had taken five E-days. Flyers traveled at 2.3 gees acceleration and deceleration. This was hard on their pilots, but the pilots, all young and fit hotshots, didn’t care. The bodily strain was a point of pride. Thinking about this made Syree feel old.
“Gangway contact,” the OOD said to Peres. “Locking … locking confirmed.”
“Pressurize,” Peres said.
“Yes, sir. Pressurizing.”
Syree and Peres both wore full dress uniform. Going down with all flags flying. If indeed they were going down, if this mission was being recalled. Syree didn’t mind recall. She did mind not having accomplished what she came here to do.
“Airlock opening on the flyer, sir.”
Another voice, over the intercom from the gangway. “Captain Llewellyn Jones of Flyer 583. Request permission to come aboard.”
“Permission granted. Lieutenant, open the airlock.”
“Opening airlock.”
Jones came aboard, suited but carrying his helmet, walking with the carefully controlled steps of someone adjusting to a big gravitational change. But walking: another point of pilot pride. When you preferred jumping around the galaxy to any steady command, and you never knew from one hour to the next what you would be required to do, it was important to demonstrate control of yourself at all times. Fast, small, hard to detect, flyers were to warfare what operatives were to intelligence work.
Peres said, “Welcome aboard, Captain Jones.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“This is Colonel Johnson.”
“Ma’am.” Peres didn’t need to give Syree’s title, Team Commander for Special Project; it was obvious that Jones already knew who she was and what she was doing here. Or, rather, trying to do here.
“The mailsack for Zeus personnel is aboard my flyer,” Jones said. “Download whenever you say. And I have a live-recipient-only message for Colonel Johnson from Headquarters.”
“This way.”
Peres led them to his quarters and activated a security shield. The room was now impervious to electronic detection of any type. If the bridge caught fire, a soldier would have to knock on the door to get Peres’s attention.
“Do you want to desuit, Captain Jones?” Peres said.
“No, thank you, sir. I’m not going to be here that long. My message is actually an official inquiry for Colonel Johnson, from General Stefanak. The general wants to know what you’ve discovered, ma’am.”
Syree had expected this. There was no way to send a message through a space tunnel unless it was carried by a physical object: a capsule, a probe, a person. The first two could carry questions and replies, but only people could ask the next questions, the ones that always arose from the reply. Jones was a human message capsule. That Stefanak had decided to send him told Syree that the war was not going well.
This particular space tunnel had not, as far as humans knew, yet been discovered by the Fallers. Sending a flyer through it increased the chance that it might be. Stefanak had done so anyway, which suggested great need on the other end.
“I’ve prepared a complete report to take to General Stefanak,” Syree said, handing Jones the communication cube. “Let me also summarize for you. The artifact does indeed seem to be a weapon, and of a type we have never seen before. We have activated once, at lowest setting, to no damage to the Zeus or the planet but with destruction of a shuttle and one casualty, shuttle pilot Captain Daniel Austen. The artifact appears to emit a spherical wave that temporarily destabilizes nuclei of all elements with an atomic number above seventy-five.”
Jones’s eyes widened, his professional unflappability momentarily breached. But only momentarily. “And your current plans for the artifact, Colonel?”
“We’ve made extensive investigation with every means we could research, invent, or imagine,” Syree said. “The information yielded has been either negligible or unuseful. There seems no way to get to the interior unless we cut it apart with the Zeus’s weapons, which may render it useless. Neither will the artifact go through the tunnel; the Schwarzschild radius is too large.”
Jones waited.
“The options therefore appear to be limited. The weapon can in theory be towed toward the space tunnel, established there, and set with probes to destabilize anything coming through the tunnel that doesn’t give off a preset alarm signal. In that way it can be used to defend this star system. The star system can then be used as a secure base for military operations and storage.”
Jones nodded. “I see. That might be useful, ma’am.”
“Possibly. The one planet within Earth-class parameters is already well inhabited with sentients. However, reports from the scientific team on the surface indicate that the natives are very open to the concept of trade. Raw materials supply for our engineers is therefore a possibility. And, of course, this system could be used for
secure stations and dry dock.”
Again Jones nodded. “And the reports from the team planetside?”
“Included on your cube. They seem to be routine”—Syree hadn’t actually viewed all of them—“concerned with the preindustrial native culture. Also with geological findings, and such. No evidence of any alien visitation, including Fallers, except for Orbital Object #7 itself. And the natives consider that to be just another moon.”
“Yes, ma’am. Any other message for General Stefanak?”
Such as what? That Syree had failed in her mission to find a way for this invaluable discovery to turn the tide of war? The failure might be unavoidable, but failure it nonetheless was.
“No other message, Captain Jones.”
Peres said, “What news of the war?”
“Complete official dispatches on your download, Commander. Unofficially, the news stinks.” Jones suddenly looked much older, despite the juvenile diction. “The Fallies destroyed our military base on Camden before we even knew that they knew it was there. They also destroyed three more cruisers. The bastards won’t tell us what they want, or why they want it, or negotiate at all. More and more it looks like all they want is to just wipe out humans completely. Pick us off on colonies first, weaken the fleet, and then eventually move in on the solar system.”
The flyer pilot’s tone was as crisp and even as always, but silence followed his words.
Peres broke it. “What else can we do for you, Captain?”
“Nothing. I’m on my way back as soon as the mail exchange is completed. Commander Peres, Colonel Johnson.” He saluted, and Peres escorted him back to the docking bay.
Syree remained in Peres’s quarters. On a shelf sat his biomonitor. The commander of the Zeus was a follower of the Discipline, then. What mix of neuropharms did Peres call up in the morning? What was the optimum mix to face a day in which your mission was mostly futile, your reports were mostly negative, and your species was losing a war with a genocidal enemy no one could understand?
There had to be a way into Orbital Object #7. A way to dismantle it short of destroying it. To take it through the space tunnel into the human space on the other side, Caligula system. And then on through other tunnels, back to Sol. To reassemble it and set it guarding humanity’s prime home instead of this gods-forsaken, three-miles-up-the-asshole-of-the-world planet where nobody lived except a species whose main interest in life was growing flowers.
There had to be a way.
NINE
GOFKIT JEMLOE
This is Pek Renjamor,” Voratur said expansively. It was the. morning after the party—very early in the morning, Bazargan noted. However, Voratur looked fresh and eager.”Pek Renjamor is a healer. He also owns a manufactury of healing doses, which will be manufacturing your antihistamines for me.”
Pek Ranjamor offered a hospitality flower. Bazargan, trying not to yawn, took it and smiled. The alien manufacturer made a comic contrast to Voratur: small, wrinkled, and silent.
Voratur boomed, “The sun shines this morning, and Pek Renjamor and I are ready, Pek Bazargan, to show you how we will find many people with flower sickness for any bloom you care to name. Already Pek Renjamor has healers in his manufactury prepared to duplicate whatever Pek Sikorski teaches him. We hope to begin the tests on World bodies by tonight.”
Tonight? Pek Bazargan stifled another yawn. It was very early.
“Come, come,” Voratur said. “I have your bicycle outside the gate, for the ride to Rafkit Seloe. We do not want to waste the sun. Or time!” He laughed, then grew solemn again. Somehow his round face lengthened. “We have just enough time to return here before the picture of my brain must be made.”
“The brain picture is not dangerous, you know,” Bazargan said.
“I know,” Voratur answered, in tones of such dread that Bazargan went to put on his clothes and ride to Rafkit Seloe before the trader changed his mind.
Despite himself, he was impressed by the sunflasher station in the capital. It was amazingly simple. And amazingly fast.
The three men walked, puffing, up a steep hill outside Rafkit Seloe, and then climbed an even steeper set of winding stairs that curled around the outside of a slender tower. At the top sat a woman in a sunflasher tunic and enormous hat. Its brim extended two feet from her head, shading her from the bright orangy sun.
“Pek Bazargan, this is Pek Careber, sunflasher. One of the best, I must add—I always try to send messages while she’s on duty here!”
The woman flushed with pleasure, then turned elaborately businesslike. “And what is your message today, Pek?”
“We need people with flower sickness to pajalib, mittib, or jelitib, to be paid for work with healers. Here, I have written it out. Pek Bazargan, watch this, now. She is very, very fast. And completely accurate.”
Bazargan wrenched himself away from the view. World lay spread at his feet, lush and beautiful. From this height the land was a colorful mosaic spreading away from the neat center whiteness of Rafkit Seloe. In all directions lay small trim villages, white roads, green or yellow or orange fields, darker woods. And everywhere was riotous patches of flowers: in gardens, in parks, by roadsides, even in the middle of crop fields where no Terran farmer would ever plant them. Crimson, cobalt, lemon, apricot, scarlet, turquoise, mauve, emerald, damask. Never had Bazargan been so aware of the many gorgeous words for color, or of the primacy of flowers on World.
“Watch, please, Pek Bazargan.”
He watched. The sunflasher tilted a large mirror to the east. An answering flash came from a tower Bazargan couldn’t see. The sunflasher nodded and began to rapidly tilt the mirror this way and that, consulting the paper Bazargan had given her, and pausing every so often for confirming flashes.
Bazargan said, “How far apart are the towers?”
Voratur answered him. “They average seven cellib.”
About thirty kilometers. The circumference of World was thirty-six thousand kilometers, with its principal landmass conveniently girdling the equator. The towers, Voratur had told him, were constantly staffed on all sunny days. Assume that an emergency message took half a minute to flash, and then was immediately flashed on to the next tower. If the weather cooperated, a message could travel halfway around World, from dawn to sunset, in about ten Earth-hours. And then another ten for the other hemisphere. Undoubtedly there were branch towers as well, off the straight equatorial line. And the ubiquitous bicycle messengers for remote villages.
Voratur’s message didn’t need to circumflash the globe. But theoretically, at least, a really desperate message could reach everyone on this “backward” planet in a single Earth day.
Despite himself, Bazargan was impressed. And, of course, messages would be instantly believed; nobody had to be talked into anything. Shared reality would therefore make for enormously fast mobilization. Although it also made for pretty slow inventiveness. The culture lacked truly maverick thinkers. Although sentient long before any species on Terra, World had yet to invent the steam engine.
“There,” Voratur said with satisfaction, after the sunflasher translated some answering flashes from the distant tower. “Pek Renjamor, you will have about forty people with flower sicknesses reporting to you at sunset.”
“Ah,” said Renjamor, practically the first word he’d spoken. The syllable held deep satisfaction.
“Now,” Voratur said to Bazargan, “I am ready for the picture of my brain.”
By the time Bazargan bathed after the hot bicycle ride back to Gofkit Jemloe, made his way across the gardens, and knocked on the open archway of Ann’s lab, she already had the Lagerfeld scan set up.
Like all the team’s advanced equipment, the Lagerfeld was usually kept locked in a featureless, impenetrable metal box. Worlders understood that Terrans had many “objects from manufacturies” which they did not choose to trade. This caused no problem. Too pragmatic to consider the science equipment “magic,” Worlders were also too commercial to show much interest in that wh
ich didn’t seem to lead to any profit. That attitude explained their own lack of scientists, with the exception of healers. Still, the lockboxes could only be opened by DNA ID, could not be moved without setting off major alarms, and gave off homing signals detectable by orbital probes that could, in turn, beam the location back to the team’s comlinks. Bazargan trusted commercial pragmatism only so far.
Voratur, fatter than Bazargan, was resting after his ride to the sunflasher tower. He’d told Bazargan to expect him at Pek Sikorski’s “shortly.” Before the alien arrived, Bazargan had several things he wanted to discuss with the team biologist. “Good morning, Ann.”
“Good morning, Ahmed. May your flowers bloom in profusion,” Ann said in World.
Then Bazargan saw Enli, sitting quietly on a round pillow in the corner. Irritation pricked him. He was careful not to let it show. “May your flowers bloom, Ann, Enli. Enli, Pek Sikorski and I have many things to discuss.”
The ugly girl—Bazargan was developing an eye for World standards of beauty—rose obediently. “I will return, then, Pek Sikorski, when Pek Voratur arrives.”
“Fine,” Ann said with a smile.
Bazargan watched Enli leave, cross the courtyard, and disappear behind a curving wall. That path, he knew, wound back around several buildings to end up at the thick, hollow wall surrounding the Voratur compound. Was it possible …
“Ann,” he said in English, “how much English has Enli learned?”
“Not much,” Ann said. “We have working lessons several times a day, but she just doesn’t seem to pick it up.”
“Could she be pretending, and actually understand more than she pretends?”
“I don’t think so, Ahmed. After all, that would cause her a whopping headache.”
“Yes, of course,” Bazargan said. “Forget it. I see you’re eager for this experiment.”
“That doesn’t begin to describe it.” Ann laughed. “Even so, I’m not as eager as David. He’s coming from the crelm house for the scan. Not Dieter, though.”
