"Paul," said Mark, pointing at the map screen, "they're taking us into the fourth planet of the system, just as we figured. When we land, I want to leave nearly everyone aboard but you, Lily, Spal, and me. We'll make up a VIP committee to go in and talk to the Meda V'Dan in person."
"All right," said Paul, but he hesitated. "You're sure you don't want to leave at least one outposter with these two boat-loads of colonists?"
"No. I may need you," said Mark. "Anyway, they might as well start now learning to get along on their own without an outposter to fall back on."
The escorting alien ships brought the human vessels into a fused-rock landing area just outside what Mark judged to be a city in the planet's northern hemisphere. Viewed on the scout ship screens during landing, the buildings were remarkably uniform and regularly spaced. They were windowless, dome-roofed towers of something like ten stories in height, rising out of what looked almost like a vast metal platform some five miles square and a hundred and fifty feet thick, its edges sloping down to fused rock all around. Altogether, the appearance was more that of some monster machine than of an inhabited city.
Once they had landed, there was no further Meda V'Dan activity about the two human ships for nearly four hours. At the end of that time, a talk-light beam pinged upon the outer hull of the two vessels and an alien voice speaking in Meda V'Dan invited the commander outposter to come forth and be conducted to a meeting with the authorities, to whom he could explain his presence.
Mark, Paul, Lily, and Spal left their scout ship and found a small, floating platform vehicle, pilotless, waiting for them beside the ship. Once they had all stepped up onto its flat metal bed, the vehicle began to move. It picked up speed as it headed toward the city, slid up the angle of the edge of the vast platform, keeping a constant distance from the sloping surface, and moved on in among the forest of windowless buildings.
It stopped at last by the base of one of these, and a door there slid downward out of sight to show a short interior passageway. Still, there were no Meda V'Dan to be seen.
"Come along," said Mark.
The four went into the building. The door closed behind them, and another opened at the end of the short passage. They walked forward and through this new door to find themselves on a narrow, fragile-looking metal catwalk that soared way ahead of them through girders and unlighted space until it was lost in gloom. The second door slid shut behind them, and a small glow appeared about the metal of the catwalk, illuminating their way.
Lily made a short noise in her throat, halfway between a choke and a sound of retching.
"Hang on," said Mark. "You'll get used to the smell after a bit. Don't hold your nose or anything like that. They may be watching —and remember, they don't think we smell like a bed of roses, either."
Still, Mark himself was tempted to hold his breath as he led the rest of them across the catwalk. The stink of the Meda V'Dan corridor was something like the smell of rancid animal fat, with a sweetish, unnatural overtaste that caught in the human throat and seemed to cling there.
Somewhere in the gloomy midair, their catwalk intersected with another, angling in from the left. All routes in the intersection were blocked but the one leading off to the right. Mark turned that way, with the others following, and perhaps a hundred feet farther on they came to the open entrance of another short passageway.
This led to a white-coloured door that slid aside at their approach and let them into a wide room containing a very human-looking set of padded furniture. As the door closed behind them, a strong breeze began blowing from the walls, and, shortly, the native smell of the aliens began to diminish.
"They've had humans here before," said Paul.
"Bound to have had," said Mark, looking around the room. "Brass from Navy Base, if nothing else. Any time now—"
A startled grunt from Spal interrupted him. The ex-Marine had dropped down into one of the armchairs—to all appearances like any such piece of padded furniture made on Earth—and found it unyielding. What appeared to be spring-filled cushions covered with fabric was evidently only an imitation of such in some hard material.
Paul laughed, and reached down to put his hand to the nap of the carpet underfoot.
"Like wire," he said to Mark, straightening up. "Wouldn't surprise me if it was wire." He went across the room to a farther door, which slid aside as he approached. He glanced into the room beyond. "At least we've got sanitary facilities. Unless they're imitation, too."
He reached inside and turned a tap on what appeared to be an ordinary enough human-style washstand. Water spurted into the basin below. Paul turned the tap off, wrinkling his nose. He stepped back into the room as the door he had just leaned through closed once more behind him.
"Their water smells too," Paul said. He looked at Mark. "Now what? We just wait?"
Mark nodded.
This time the wait stretched out. Several times, Mark went back out through the obediently opening doors and back along the catwalk as far as the intersection. There he stood, listening. Occasionally, from far below there would be the faint, distant, shivering sound of metal striking against metal, or a noise like that of a heavy weight dragged over a concrete floor. When he went back to the room, his nose had become so accustomed to the thick Meda V'Dan odour that the clean air of the steadily ventilated room smelled flat and strange in his nostrils.
The fourth time he came back from such an excursion, his step was rapid and brisk.
"We've waited long enough," he said to Paul clearly and loudly as he came in. "Nearly six hours and we're here without food or drink. If no one's shown up by the time the six hours are up, we'll head back to the ship."
Less than ten minutes later, the door to the room opened of its own accord, and a smaller version of the floating platform vehicle that had brought them to the city entered the room. On its flat bed was a small stack of packages—Navy-issue food and drink in decay-proof containers.
Spal stepped hastily toward it, and Lily slid off the hard cushion of the imitation chair on which she had been curled up, with her legs folded under her. Mark put out a hand and stopped the ex-Marine.
"No," he said, his voice echoing a little from the walls in the silence. "I don't think so. We didn't come here to be fed issue rations. These Meda V'Dan have to be either pretty poor or pretty ignorant to offer refreshment like this to us."
The platform hovered where it was for a few seconds longer. Then it slowly backed out of the room and it was gone.
"But, Mark," said Lily. "I'm—" She broke off as Mark's gaze came around hard upon her. She sighed and climbed slowly back up on her chair. The other two men, watching Mark, said nothing.
After another dozen minutes, the door opened again. The platform floated back in, this time carrying several tall sealed bottles and four of the large silver packages that held a complete meal each for a stateroom-class passenger on a human spaceship.
"Better," said Mark.
Paul picked up the bottles one by one and looked at them.
"Rhine wine, brandy," he said, "and bottled water." He helped Spal transfer the platform's load to the room's only table. Once unloaded, the platform slid quietly out.
The rest ate and drank hungrily. Mark drank only some bottled water.
"You ought to eat," said Lily.
He shook his head, barely hearing her voice against the background of his thoughts, as he sat in one of the hard imitation chairs, a disposable cup of water in his hand. He was here at last among the homes of the Meda V'Dan after years of imagining how he would get here, and the reality of it had kindled a grim fire of exultation in him that was acting on his thoughts like an explosive stimulant. Ideas raced one another through his mind. He had to fight back the impulse to get up and pace the floor under the fever they roused in him.
The door to the room slid open.
They all looked up, and Mark got to his feet as a Meda V'Dan rode into the room on a small platform vehicle. Li
ke all the aliens, to human eyes he seemed identical with every other Meda V'Dan Mark had seen. His loose shirt was white with swirled black patterns, and his black and white checkered pants were stuffed into high red boots, each of which had a chain of what seemed to be small, burning fires looped around each boot top.
"Ou'posser Com'der Mar' T'Roos," he said awkwardly in human speech, staring impartially at them all, "ozzer Lords and Cap'ins. Welcome."
"Thanks," said Mark, and the eyes of the alien swung around to focus on him for just a second before slipping aside to stare past his right shoulder. "Who've we got to thank for all of this?"
The Meda V'Dan fell back into his own tongue.
[May thank me, human,] he said. [In right-ness all call me Lord and Greatest Captain He of Fifty Names. Graciously I yield to importunities of humans clamouring to petition Most Important Person of the Meda V'Dan.]
His gaze shifted from Mark for a moment to flicker over the small figure of Lily, then return to station off Mark's shoulder.
[Not usual,] he said, [humans bearing their young among us of the Meda V'Dan. Nor are we sure are alien whelps welcome here.]
"You're talking about an adult," replied Mark. "This lady is an independent colonist named Lily Betaugh. And she's not only grown up, she's a woman of wisdom—of philosophy."
"Phil'sss ..." Attempting to imitate Mark's pronunciation of the human word, He of Fifty Names failed utterly. In Meda V'Dan, he added, [The sound is not known to me.]
"Philosophy," said Mark. "That which a people believe to be true about themselves and their relation to the universe."
[Ah, philosophy.] Fifty Names came up with a word Mark had not learned in the Meda V'Dan vocabulary.
"Is that it?" Mark said. "All right. She's a student and teacher of philosophy of the Meda V'Dan."
[That is easily told,] said Fifty Names. [The Meda V'Dan were old and rich when all other races were unborn and unconceived. The Meda V'Dan shall be rich and unchanged when all other races have died. For only we know the secret of the universe and will live forever, as we have already lived forever. Therefore, it is in the Meda V'Dan alone that we of the Meda V'Dan believe, and that is our philosophy. All else is supposition and error, that in which barbaric and short-lived races believe.]
"I see," said Mark.
[Good that you see,] said Fifty Names. [But there becomes in me an impatience. You have come searching out the Most Important Person of the Meda V'Dan for talk. Talk, then.]
"I intend to," said Mark.
But having said that much, he said no more. For a long moment the silence grew in the room, then Fifty Names himself broke it.
[Human speech speaks of speaking but speaks no speech,] he said. His words played on the active Meda V'Dan term for dialogue between alien and human and were either a joke or a sneer.
"That's because I'm still waiting for the Most Important Person to arrive," said Mark.
[I am here.]
"You're here," said Mark. "He isn't."
[To humans I am the Most Important Person.]
"Not to me, you're not," said Mark.
[Frail human with little ships, do you try to insult a Lord and Greatest Captain of the Meda V'Dan?]
"As Outposter Commander of the Independent Colony of Abruzzi Station Fourteen on Ganera Six," said Mark, "I'm insulted to be kept waiting by a Meda V'Dan of lesser rank than should be talking to me. In fact, I'm just about out of patience. I told the Meda V'Dan on the ships that intercepted us that they evidently didn't realize whom they were talking to. Evidently you don't know either. We'll be leaving."
He turned to the other three humans.
"Let's go," he said, and walked toward the door, which opened before him.
[Humans will leave when given leave, not otherwise.] The alien voice followed him.
"We'll leave when I say so," said Mark, still walking toward the door. "Interfere with us in any way, and the Meda V'Dan will never deal with another human being again."
He was at the door.
[Pause,] said Fifty Names. [There may be a misconception here.]
Mark stopped at the doorway and turned about, to look back at the Meda V'Dan. He did not come back into the room, however, and after a second, Fifty Names stepped down from the platform.
[A misconception,] he said, [may exist.]
"Not on my part," said Mark.
[The possibility exists that I have been wrongly informed by the Lords and Great Captains of the ships which met you as you came close to our sun,] Fifty Names said. [If this is so, they are criminals and no better, and they will be punished for this as soon as they can be identified and apprehended. Unfortunately, they have all left this solar system on business of their own before I was told you were waiting here. But if we can find them, they will suffer—]
"Never mind," said Mark, He was still standing in the doorway. "I'm not interested in unimportant individuals, but in your Most Important Person. If I can't see him shortly, we're leaving."
[You will see him.]
Mark turned and came back into the room.
"Sit down again," he told the other three, then turned his attention back to Fifty Names. "How soon?"
[It is impossible to tell—wait,] said Fifty Names, as Mark turned once more toward the door, [but perhaps an hour of meeting can be found and established. Not precisely—]
"It'll have to be precisely," said Mark.
[Possibly, possibly it can be precisely determined.]
"And it'll have to be soon. We've waited longer than we should already."
[Soon,] said Fifty Names. [As soon as possible.]
"Now," said Mark.
[That is not possible.]
"Then," said Mark, "we're leaving now."
[If you leave, you leave,] said Fifty Names. [Now is not possible. Not even in a little while is it possible. Not even if He of Most Importance wished it, would it be possible in any case other than an emergency for all Meda V'Dan. He is our Most Important Person and his duties are many.]
"In six more hours, then—at the outside," said Mark.
[Impossible. Three days at the least.]
"I'll make that eight hours," said Mark. "But we're not staying here any three days."
[Possibly, just barely possibly, he might speak to you, if all things go well, in under two days.]
"No," said Mark. "Eight hours. All right, ten hours. But at the end of ten hours we lift our ships."
[I tell you, human—and I am a Lord and Greatest Captain among the Meda V'Dan—he whom you wish to speak to is not merely of this universe but in part of another. He is not to be summoned in a moment to an unknown meeting. If I died for it, he could not be spoken to by you in under sixteen hours.]
"Ten," said Mark.
[Sixteen,] said Fifty Names. [Go if you wish.]
"We'll wait ten, then leave," said Mark.
[Very well. I will try to bring you to him in less than sixteen. But I promise nothing and expect nothing. Nor should you.]
Fifty Names stepped back up on the platform vehicle, and it carried him out. The door closed behind him.
"Sixteen hours," said Paul, looking after the alien. "Maybe we should go back to the ship."
"No," said Mark. He looked around the room and spoke to the walls. "We'll need bedding. Blankets. And some way of controlling this lighting so that we can darken the room for sleeping."
In less than twenty minutes, the platform vehicle returned with a neat stack of white Navy blankets and two small, brown pillows. A panel opened in the wall to the left of the door, revealing a rheostatlike control knob, and Mark, experimenting, found that it was possible to dial the illumination about them from darkness up into a brilliance that made them shield their eyes. He turned the control back down until the room was in a dimness only slightly brighter than that of the gloom about the catwalk outside.
There were enough blankets so that they could make pads to protect themselves from the stiff fibres of the imitation rug
and still have a blanket apiece left for wrapping themselves. When they were all rolled up in their blankets but Mark, Mark turned the lights down into total darkness and then felt his way back along the wail to his own pad and blanket.
He was busy there for some while, then he felt his way across to where memory told him Spal was lying. The ex-Marine woke at the touch of an exploring hand on his face.
"What—" Spal began. Mark put his hand over the other's mouth, choking off his voice.
"Quiet." Mark breathed in the short man's ear. "Listen now, and don't talk. Hang on to your covering blanket, but climb up on my shoulders when I get to my feet. Once you're up, wrap the blanket around you so it hides me completely. Got that?"
Mark removed his hand from Spal's mouth.
He obeyed. It was slow and clumsy in the darkness, but in a couple of minutes, Spal was riding Mark's shoulders and the blanket the ex-Marine had wrapped around his shoulders cloaked Mark from view.
Once Mark felt the blanket around him and the smaller man firmly on his shoulders, he started to work his way by memory back to the wall, and then along the wall to the light control. He almost missed it, but feeling the edge of the door sent him back with surer aim. A moment later he had it. He turned the light up until it was barely possible to see Spal's now-empty pad, the two blanket-wrapped forms of Lily and Paul, and a blanketed shape huddled against the wall where Mark's own sleeping position had been.
Mark turned, balancing the weight of Spal on his shoulders. Peering out through a crack where he held the two edges of blanket together before him, he headed toward the small, blanket-wrapped figure of Lily. When he got there, he saw that she was wide awake and watching him without moving.
"Get up," he whispered.
She tossed the edge of her blanket back and stood up—a slightly tousled doll-shape.
"Come on."
He turned, again carefully, and led the way toward the door of the room, which opened before them. Together, the three in the guise of two went down the corridor and out onto the walkway.
It was more than a slightly effortful distance to the intersection of the two walkways for Mark, carrying the weight of Spal. When Mark reached the intersection, he pressed up against the railing next to the barrier that closed off the intersecting walkway, and gradually squatted down under the blanket until Spal's feet touched the walkway floor on each side of him.
The Outposter Page 8
