Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  ‘Ah!’ Min exclaimed, on a note which added Finally!, seeing that the shuttle they’d sent over to the Rose Voyager was now breaking away, signalling their intention to return, passenger aboard.

  Two minutes later, the shuttle docked at the main entry airlock, with the Exec there to welcome Skipper Eldovan aboard. And half a minute after that, she came through to the command deck.

  Alex’s first impression was that there’d been some awful mistake. This was not Skipper Eldovan. Could there have been someone of the same name travelling on the Rose Voyager, while the real Eldovan, their Eldovan, had gone by courier as planned?

  But no, impossible. Her ID was definitely that of Skipper Eldovan, Fleet Shipmaster. And if she’d gone by courier, after all, she’d have been at Karadon when they arrived.

  But this was not – surely – Skipper Eldovan.

  The woman who’d come on to the command deck was strikingly attractive, athletic, quick and free moving. There was no cone of stiff hair on top of her head, but long, dark hair flowing free around her shoulders. Fleet uniform regs did not allow that, but then, she wasn’t in uniform anyway. She was wearing Telethoran clothes, a body-skimming dress in a soft fabric with a vibrant floral print, paired with flower-adorned sandals and a fascinator clipped behind one ear. These were worn by men and women alike on Telathor, often with designs which included flowers and insects. The fascinator this woman was wearing had golden lilies and a jewel bee trembling on a hair-thin support so that it bobbed about, almost alive, as she walked.

  Her luggage, Alex saw, was following. There was no kitbag slung over her shoulder. Instead, there was the kind of three-set matching suitcases tourists might buy for a trip on a liner. These too were Telathoran – obviously so, from the rounded design and jungle-flower motif. They had been slaved to follow her wristcom, and were trundling along behind her, big, medium and small. When she stopped, they moved themselves into a neat row behind her.

  The silence on the Assegai’s command deck was aghast. Evidently aware of that, Eldovan cast an alert, amused eye over the jaw-dropped faces all around. Then she evaluated Min and Alex with a smiling look.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, to them both, and to the captain, holding out her hand in friendly manner, ‘Good to meet you at last, Alex.’

  It was Eldovan. He could see that, studying her closely, though her facial features were almost unrecognisable, so relaxed as they were, and smiling.

  ‘Eldovan?’ he said, and could not keep the note of incredulity out of his voice.

  ‘The one and only,’ she quipped back, and gave him a mischievous look, teasing him to comment on her transformation. ‘I take it you have orders for me?’ She queried, and before he could answer, ‘Only is it really, seriously important? Because I am on leave, you know.’

  She had gone mad, Alex thought. She’d had some kind of breakdown and had disassociated from reality.

  ‘And I was having so much fun,’ she added.

  I was having so much fun, Alex felt, were not words which Eldovan, in her right mind, would ever have uttered. And at that, the stern rebuke which had been rising in him at the outrageous manner in which she’d seen fit to report aboard ship was stifled by the realisation that she was seriously unwell.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But there are priority orders…’ he was thinking fast. Sending for medics to take her straight to sickbay might well cause an unpleasant scene on the command deck. ‘Do, please,’ he got to his feet, gesturing hospitably, ‘Come with me… and perhaps,’ he glanced at Min, ‘someone will take your, uh, luggage to your quarters?’

  Min gave a tiny nod, round eyed with silent disbelief. Though she and Eldovan were both of skipper rank, Eldovan had two years seniority over her – and, more potently, a Fleet wide reputation that made even superiors regard her with apprehension. And now she was standing there wearing a pretty dress with a glittery bee in her hair, chatty and cheerful, even cheeking the captain. Min could have wept for the tragedy of it.

  ‘Oki doki,’ Eldovan flashed a smile to Min, tapped her wristcom to disconnect the luggage, and went with Alex as he led the way aft to the flag suite. She was, he realised, richly scented, with aromas which awoke many memories of his own time on Telathor… that smoky, sandalwood base with a tang of fresh damp greenery and the heady scent of roses. It was so strong that it must, he realised, have come close to setting off biohazard alerts in the airlock.

  ‘Errgh, yuck!’ was her reaction to the flag daycabin, as he led her in there. ‘I know you like minimalism, Alex, but really…’ She sat down on the sofa he was indicating. ‘This is just depressing.’ A reproving look came his way. ‘Couldn’t you at least have some cushions? A picture or two?’

  ‘I don’t use it very much,’ Alex said, and sat down cautiously at right angles to her, keeping his own manner very calm. ‘So – how have you been, Eldovan?’

  She cast him a shrewd look and giggled. Actually giggled.

  ‘I haven’t gone mad,’ she told him, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’ She indicated her extraordinarily radical new look. ‘I’ve always been like this,’ she said, ‘inside. But I stifled it, kept it down – my whole life, acting as someone I didn’t even want to be.’

  Ah, Alex thought. An Epiphany Episode, a breakdown in which she rejected every aspect of a life which had become intolerable, reinventing herself – an extreme kind of mid-life crisis, really. And, Alex was thinking, more than a touch of Paradise Syndrome.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Eldovan said, quite kindly. ‘And I know you’ll have to have me checked out. But I can promise you, Alex, I’m fine, really fine, clear and completely together. And happy. Really happy.’

  As she spoke, Simmy was coming into the daycabin, carrying a tray. The steward was nervous, half fascinated by the sight of a Fleet Skipper who’d evidently lost her mind, and half terrified. Perhaps she thought it might be contagious.

  ‘Brought you drinks,’ she ventured, depositing the tray onto the coffee table at arm’s length.

  Alex said thanks, but Eldovan was regarding the contents of the tray with disapprobation.

  ‘You can take that away,’ she said, pointing at the cup of pale, bitter tea which Simmy had found on record as her preferred beverage. ‘Bring me a hibiscus spritzer, will you?’ Her smile for the young steward was charming. ‘If you don’t have tansy flowers, orange zest will do.’

  Simmy backed away, swivelling her eyes towards Alex without turning her head, as if fearful that the insane Eldovan might leap at her if she really looked away.

  Alex, though, merely gave a confirmatory nod – whatever was wrong with Eldovan, he wouldn’t embarrass her in front of a rating. So Simmy darted forward, grabbed the rejected mug and fled with it.

  ‘So,’ Alex said, when she’d gone, and with a gesture to indicate Eldovan’s transformation, ‘can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Sarat,’ Eldovan said, decisively. ‘Well – Carrearranis itself, of course, but Sarat, directly.’ She grinned at him. ‘She sends her love, and says to tell you to keep your shoes dry.’

  Alex felt a pang that was almost like homesickness. The mission to Carrearranis had worn him almost to a shadow, but had also given him some of the happiest memories of his life. And good friends, too.

  Sarat, admittedly, had been more of an adoptive grandmother than a friend. She had adopted him, deciding that he was a good hearted lad, not too bright but doing his best, and that he needed a granny.

  Grandmothers were effectively the law enforcement officers in Carrearranian society, scolding and slapping even the most macho of men round the ear to keep them in order. And Sarat, as Alex had soon realised, was a kind of uber-granny, her authority respected even on islands thousands of kilometres away, and her opinion, when given, not to be argued with.

  Alex, for once, had recognised that he had met his match. Like all Carrearranians, Sarat was tiny in comparison with the more common human genomes, standing just eighty two centimetres tall. Th
e Carrearranian genome, however, was extraordinarily tough. The density of their bones and musculature was such that even their children weighed more than a full grown homo sapiens, while a slap from them would send an offworlder flying, broken bones, concussion, unconscious. They ate food homo sapiens could not digest, crunching nuts with the texture of concrete and enjoying spices which would put even an addicted chilli-holic into sickbay. And quite apart from all that, Sarat’s sheer force of personality had reduced Alex to the status of slightly gormless youth.

  The incident Eldovan was referring to there had been typical. Whether Sarat had understood that Alex’s boots were waterproof or not was not clear and had not mattered anyway, as she’d scolded him for foolishness in allowing sea-water to lap at his footwear, leaving a rime of salt on their glossy surface. Alex had been made to take them off so that they could be cleaned, and while sitting there in his socks, had been told how naughty it was to spoil fine clothes.

  A glimmer of enlightenment dawned deep within him as he thought about Eldovan and Sarat together. The islander would not have been impressed in any way with the Fleet officer’s stern, cold demeanour. Was it possible that she’d adopted Eldovan, too, and set about getting her to let her hair down – literally – and have fun?

  Surely not, Alex told himself. And if that had been a factor then perhaps that had been a triggering event in the combination of Epiphany Episode and Paradise Syndrome he suspected had led Eldovan into this delirious abandonment of duty and embracing of hedonistic pleasures. But how, how, he wondered, had she even been allowed to leave Carrearranis in this state? Or to get past the Fleet people at Oreol, and the Port Admiral at Telathor? Surely they must have recognised the condition she was in, and somebody should have taken the necessary action to get her into treatment?

  ‘She’s amazing,’ Eldovan said, with obvious affection. ‘Threatened to smack me if I didn’t stop being so miserable.’ She laughed. ‘Gave me a right talking-to!’ Another chuckle at the memory. ‘And I realised, sitting there, with the sea and the jungle and the stars, she was right. I was in one of the most beautiful places in the cosmos, for sure, a world of magical beauty and wonder, and I couldn’t enjoy it, couldn’t even enjoy that, because I was so up my own bum having to be Ms Prim and Perfect the whole time. So I let them do my hair and teach me songs, and they took me fishing… you didn’t go out fishing with them, did you, when you were there?’

  Alex shook his head. It was something he’d managed to avoid, with tact, whenever he’d been pressed to go out with the fishing boats. He would have enjoyed the sailing, he knew, and would have liked to learn how to handle their red-sailed outriggers. But the prospect of pulling up live fish from the ocean and either batting their heads against the side of the boat to kill them or leaving them to flounder in a suffocating heap… no. Even Alex’s dedication to goodwill diplomacy had its limits.

  ‘I did,’ Eldovan said ‘And it was astounding – primal, out there on the ocean in a tiny, fragile craft of wood and rope and cloth, pulling fish from the sea in a net – taking food so directly, completely in harmony with the ecosystem, never taking too much. They know how to live, Alex. They are so much wiser than we are in so many ways.’

  Alex had to nod agreement with that, at least. People who assumed that the Carrearranians were primitives because of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle just had no idea. Even before the Fourth had arrived there, the Carrearranians had a sophisticated cosmology, knew about starships and that there were civilisations on other worlds. And they had, too, an understanding of their own world which it had taken the Fourth weeks to even recognise. Slowly, though, it had become apparent that even the most bewildering rule or ritual custom was founded not in superstition but in strong, scientific understanding. Alex had learned his lesson on that after an incident in which he’d been shown that all the power of his starship’s meteorological analysis and all the technology at their command was no better than the Carrearranians’ Weather Tree, with its strips of seaweeds and fabrics and a crude barometer.

  ‘True enough,’ Alex conceded. ‘But it also has to be said that they were held in a state of unnatural stasis by the Guardian – which there is good reason to suspect was never intended to stay there at all.’

  That was still a theory, and unlikely ever to be confirmed or refuted, given that the only people who really knew what had happened were the Olaret, who’d died out ten thousand years ago. The evidence tended, though, to indicate that their terraforming and colonising of Carrearranis had been incomplete, with a drone-ship still in orbit there, providing communications and quarantine protection to the nascent colony, at the point where the Olaret themselves had faded out of history. And for ten thousand years afterwards the Guardian had protected, educated and provided global comms to the people of Carrearranis. Even the fact that it had been programmed to star-dive and destroy itself the moment a ‘clean ship’ arrived, passing through its quarantine, indicated that the Olaret had never intended it to be any kind of permanent fixture.

  ‘Yes, okay, they’re developing – ah, thank you, sweeting.’ Eldovan smiled as Simmy ventured back in, bearing a glass of roseate sparkling liquid with a slice of orange perched on the rim and a couple of floating ice cubes. ‘Good try,’ Eldovan commended, scooping out the ice cubes with her fingers and dropping them onto the tray, then dropping the orange slice into the drink. ‘Ta,’ she said, evidently recognising Simmy as a Subter and thanking her in her own vernacular.

  Simmy hadn’t been called ‘sweeting’ since she’d left home, and certainly had never expected to be addressed that way by a Fleet officer. She was sure they’d said something in Basic about it being an offence under regs for officers to be over-familiar with them, with ratings.

  ‘Ug,’ she said, and then, ‘muh,’ and left the daycabin at high speed.

  ‘Cute kid,’ Eldovan observed, taking a sip of her drink and setting it down again with the air of being a little disappointed, but resigned to it as the best that could be hoped for. ‘I’ll have to show her how to make that.’ And then, grinning at Alex’s carefully untroubled expression, ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured him. ‘I haven’t gone nuts! I have passed three – three – full psych workups, Alex, at Carrearranis, Oreol and Telathor. But I’ll pass another one for you by all means, to satisfy you that I really am just fine. This is not Paradise Syndrome. I know perfectly well that life on Carrearranis wasn’t perfect, and I was proud to be part of the development programme bringing in tech, education, healthcare, all that, all for it, and I know they’re going to have a great future, too. Smart people. Give them fifty years or so and I expect they’ll be the wealthiest planet in the League!’

  She was probably right. The high end tourism which was their only practicable industry would bring in the wealthiest of visitors, people willing to pay mind-boggling amounts for the privilege of an ocean cruise on that most exotic and exclusive of worlds, and even more for the hand-made artefacts which would be sold at museum-gallery prices.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Eldovan said, ‘is that being there opened my eyes, let me climb out of a self-created cocoon and learn to be me. And you’ve seen that kind of transformation, I know you have, so you should understand.’

  She had a point, Alex had to admit. He had seen some dramatic transformations – perhaps the most astonishing had been the timid, gawky girl who’d crept through the airlock like a scared mouse. And then, half an hour later, walked onto the command deck a vivacious, confident, attractive young woman. But that had been Silvie, snatching her at the airlock and whisking her away for a makeover and counselling, revealing to her that she was, in fact, a powerful empath. He’d seen other, slower, but no less profound transformations, too, though, often in bullocks who’d shed their defensive hostility towards authority and emerged as shining stars.

  ‘I do,’ Alex conceded. He was aware of a message on his wristcom, informing him that Dr Payling was in the ante room, waiting to be called in whenever Alex felt that the time was right.
But he could wait. Alex wasn’t about to rush Eldovan to sickbay so dismissively. She deserved more courtesy and consideration than that. ‘But it is, you have to admit,’ he said, with a smile, ‘a major transformation. And I’ll appreciate you being understanding if we are… concerned.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Eldovan said, good humouredly. ‘So, anyway – what is so important that it’s brought you out here, grabbing me off leave like this?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were on leave,’ Alex said. ‘As far as I was aware you were in transit to Chartsey.’

  ‘Yes, I decided to take leave on the way,’ she said. ‘It would only be a two or three week delay. And I am, after all, more than overdue a holiday. It’s been six years since I took any leave at all.’

  Alex’s eyes widened. ‘How did you pull that off?’ he asked, with the envy of a man who’d fought against leave being imposed on him many times, and lost.

  ‘Oh,’ Eldovan laughed, ‘When you have the kind of reputation I have – did,’ she corrected herself, ‘it’s amazing what you can get away with. I had Cerdan Jennar eating out of my hand, authorising leave-waivers for me. If I chose to cash them in, I could take myself off for a year. So it wasn’t unreasonable to take a couple of weeks so I could make my way to Chartsey and have a holiday as well, was it?’

  Put like that, Alex realised, it wasn’t unreasonable… no more unreasonable, come to think of it, than the couple of weeks the Assegai had taken to go to Karadon, giving time for him to have some R&R.

  ‘When I got my orders,’ she pointed out, ‘there was only a vague ETA for the Samartians arriving at Chartsey, and I knew they’d be there for at least a month before any real work got started.’

  She was right. There’d been a lengthy process of talks and preparations before the think tank had got going, and they had only really started productive work after the Assegai had left.

  ‘I sent word to Chartsey, anyway,’ Eldovan said, ‘To tell them I was taking leave and when I’d arrive. And I’d got permission for that from the port office at Telathor, obviously.’