The Telemass Quartet

by Eric Brown

  Contents

  Part One

  Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV

  Part Two

  Sacrifice on Spica III

  Part Three

  Reunion on Alpha Reticula II

  Part Four

  Exalted on Bellatrix 1

  Part One

  Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV

  ONE

  ONE SECOND HE WAS STANDING ON THE TRANSLATION PAD of the Telemass Station at Paris, Earth, and the next he was twenty-five light years away on the planet of Avoeli, Fomalhaut IV.

  As ever, the transition was not without its side effects. He felt as if he’d been hit in the chest by an industrial laser, and for a few seconds he wondered where he was. He staggered, as if pushed through a doorway by a particularly forceful hand, then regained his balance. The majority of those around him had managed the transition without batting an eyelid, though one or two were suffering the consequences of being stripped down to the molecular level and fired off on a tachyon vector light years through space.

  As his nausea abated, his memory returned. He was on Avoeli, here on a tip-off that he would at last find what he’d been searching for.

  The travellers moved off the pad towards the sliding glass door of the reception centre. Medics moved among them, checking for signs of mental and physical distress. A woman approached Hendrick and smiled. “We have a recuperation lounge available, sir, if you would care to follow me.”

  She led him into a sumptuous bubble that obtruded from the elevated superstructure. This station was built on a tripod of scimitar legs—one of the early models—and it commanded a panoramic view of the surrounding jungle and the capital city embedded in the brilliant greenery.

  He sat on a foam-form and accepted a tumbler of nutrient fluid from the woman. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to run a few minor diagnostic procedures. These are entirely routine.”

  “Of course.” He was accustomed to being treated like a child every time he took a Telemass journey. His body should have become accustomed to the trauma by now, having endured dozens of translations over the course of his working life, but if anything the side effects were worse with every trip.

  The woman ran a handheld scanner over his head and chest, reading the results on a softscreen. She was small and slim, and from the cast of her features and black skin, he guessed she was a descendant of the original Madagascan settlers. They had founded the colony two hundred years ago, when starships had crossed the gulfs of space, before the invention of the Telemass process.

  He sipped the nutrient fluid, a sweet, pleasant-tasting fruit juice. Sunlight streamed in through the convex glass walls; the hemisphere of the massive sun was climbing over the far horizon. He’d arrived in the middle of a long Avoeli day, which lasted for some thirty standard hours.

  The woman smiled. “You’re fine,” she said. “No damage done, Mr . . . ?”

  “Hendrick. Matt Hendrick.”

  “Have you come to my world on business, Mr Hendrick?” Her English was stilted, hesitant.

  “Pleasure,” he lied.

  “Then there is much to see here. The jungle is beautiful, and of course the falls are famous throughout the Expansion. Further inland, the Yola Mountain Range is spectacular.”

  He finished the juice. “The name Avoeli . . . ?”

  She smiled as if this were a common question. “My people decided not to follow the Expansion norm and give their planet a Terran name. ‘Avoeli’ is what the native aliens, the Avoel, call this world. It was considered . . . courteous to adopt their own name for the planet.”

  Hendrick had had little time to read up on the world before booking his transit here, and he knew next to nothing about the Avoel. It was not unusual for humans to live side by side with native aliens—he’d encountered many such arrangements in his travels—and he was always intrigued by societies that had grown up in such situations. He was intrigued by the interactions—or lack thereof—and by the cultural influences and prejudices that inevitably came about.

  “And the Avoel . . . Is there much contact between your peoples?”

  Something passed across her features—a quick, tell-tale tightening of the skin about her mouth, as if his question had touched a raw nerve.

  She pocketed her scanner and said, “Very little,” in a dismissive tone. “There,” she went on. “All done. I’d advise you to get a few hours sleep, Mr Hendrick, and then go out this evening to watch the amazing sunset from one of the many restaurants in the city.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, then thanked her and left the lounge.

  He passed through a cursory customs check, collected his luggage, then took the elevator down to the street and stepped into the blazing Avoeli noon.

  Appallassy was a small city as capitals went, consisting mainly of single-storey timber buildings laid out on a grid pattern of wide streets. The sight was a novelty after coming from Earth, where such a profligate use of timber had been proscribed decades ago. Electric cars beetled along the boulevards, and crowds of brightly dressed colonists promenaded through a market set out on wide sidewalks.

  The city perched on the edge of an equatorial plateau, lining the lip of an escarpment overlooking the jungle far below. The predominant shade was green, though of a deeper hue than in the jungles of Earth, and here and there tall purple spikes erupted from the jungle canopy to remind the visitor that this was indeed an alien world.

  He’d had no time to pre-book accommodation, but a terrace of small hotels lined the escarpment along from the Telemass Station. He was tired—it had been late evening in Paris when he’d departed—and he thought it wise to take the medic’s recommendation and rest. Later, when he’d slept, he’d start his investigations by enquiring at the hotels in the vicinity.

  He booked into an establishment calling itself the Malagasy Retreat, saying he’d stay for two nights, maybe more, and was shown to a quiet room overlooking a terraced garden that tumbled down the escarpment.

  He sat on the bed, brought up a series of pictures on his wrist-com, and stared at them until the succession of images became too painful to bear. Then he switched off his com, lay down, and was soon fast asleep.

  • • •

  If Lalla were here, she’d tell me if I’d done the right thing.

  As soon as the tall, blonde woman appeared on the translation pad, I was drawn to her. I don’t normally go for forty-year-old whites, but this woman had elegance and poise. Also, she was showing the effects of translation nausea.

  We got talking. She was with a man, but he hung back. We arranged to meet in a bar later, and I wondered where this might lead. She didn’t look bi, but you can never tell.

  So we met, had a drink. Her name is Maatje, and she’s from the Netherlands, Earth. She didn’t say what she was doing here,but she did say that she was being followed.

  Then I found out what she wanted from me, and I felt disappointed. I thought she might have been interested in me, not what I might be able to do for her.

  Anyway, I agreed.

  Call me weak . . . but she is beautiful.

  Lalla would hate me . . . but she did run off like that, so . . .

  Christ, Lalla, where are you?

  • • •

  The sunset was indeed amazing.

  He selected the Faro Bar, a short stroll along from his hotel, because that was where many Terran tourists had chosen to watch the sun go down. They sat at tables on the wide, stepped terraces, drank local cocktails, and gasped at the view.

  For the past two hours, since awaking from a dreamless sleep, he’d moved from hotel to hotel along the boulevard. With the inducement of the local currency he’d persuaded staff to speak with him briefly and to examine the series of pix he carr
ied on his wrist-com. He covered more than twenty hotels, but to no avail. The people he was seeking were not staying at any of the establishments he ventured into.

  He ordered a beer and stood by the rail of the terrace, listening to nearby conversations and watching the bloated hemisphere of the sun slip slowly over the horizon. Though Avoeli was the seventh planet from its primary, it was still close enough so that great loops and spumes of molten ejecta could be seen spouting from the sun as it sank.

  “In the week we’ve been here,” a woman said in French to her male companion, “this is the most spectacular . . .”

  Hendrick moved on. The people he was attempting to locate had come to Avoeli—or so his sources had told him—three days ago.

  He stood beside a knot of Europeans—a business delegation from Germany, he gathered from their conversation. They sipped at small glasses of local beer as if it were poison and talked about a convention in the morning. He glanced among them and recognised a woman he’d seen on the translation pad that day. So, they had arrived at the same time as he had. He moved on.

  He stepped down the terrace, listening into the conversation of obvious tourists and ignoring the knots of locals. He heard a dozen languages— European, Asian, and a couple he didn’t recognise but guessed were a local patois—and settled next to a group of holiday-makers speaking loud Spanish and knocking back Avoeli beer with relish.

  He smiled at a tall, elegant middle-aged woman in a flower-patterned dress and made some non sequitur about the sunset. “I’ve only just arrived, so I’m still in awe.”

  She laughed a little drunkenly. “Well so am I, and I came in on the Paris transmission three days ago.”

  His heart kicked. “But what a coincidence. Friends of mine were on that very transmission. I had arranged to meet them here today, but . . .”

  She laid a tipsy hand on his arm and laughed. “Well, I think you should join our party and celebrate the sunset, no?”

  He smiled. “Why not? But perhaps you’ve seen my friends . . . ?” And he activated his com and brought up the pix.

  The woman squinted at the images, began to shake her head, and then caught herself. “One moment. Carlos, Carlos! Isn’t this the woman you were charming before her husband returned?”

  A long-haired young man looked at Hendrick and glanced at the picture on the screen. He nodded, muttering something in Catalan about an ice maiden.

  “A friend of mine,” Hendrick said.

  The woman interrupted, “Carlos, the gentleman here is trying to locate the lady and her husband.”

  The young man shrugged. “She said they were taking the train into the interior. That would be yesterday.”

  “Did she say where they were heading?”

  Carlos frowned and shook his head. “Didn’t say, or I don’t remember.

  Sorry. She just said the interior.”

  “Well, thanks anyway.” Hendrick called the waiter for another round of beers.

  The evening wore on, and he extricated himself from the attention of the Spanish woman and moved along the terrace. He wished to be alone with his thoughts.

  The night was warm and scented with an alien perfume from flowers the size of dinner plates. He sat at a table and lodged his feet on the rail, staring down at the darkening jungle and the last filaments and flares of the sun as it vanished over the edge of the world. If he were not here on business, he told himself, he might have been able to enjoy the pleasures of the city and the surrounding jungle.

  At first light tomorrow he would make his way to the monorail station and attempt to find out where his ‘friends’ might have travelled to yesterday. It was a lead, though a slight one. He told himself that he should be content with this, so early in his investigations.

  His attention was attracted by a group of people along the terrace to his right. They were locals, talking animatedly in the sing-song Malagasy tongue. Some wore the red uniforms of the Telemass Organisation, but the medic who’d administered to his needs that morning was out of uniform. She wore a short, tight-fitting yellow dress which contrasted startlingly with her chestnut skin. He had not noticed her hair that morning—it had been swept back and concealed by a beret—but now it trailed in a comet’s tail of dreadlocks intertwined with multi-coloured ribbons.

  She appeared a little drunk, swaying as she spoke to a tall, older woman in a Telemass uniform. The woman appeared uninterested in what the younger woman was saying, and she allowed her attention to wander.

  The medic sighed and looked away; her eyes met Hendrick’s and, after a second of confusion, smiled in recognition. Hendrick looked away, not wanting her drunken attention.

  Seconds later, she left the group and swayed across to him. She lodged herself precariously on the edge of a chair and pressed a long-nailed forefinger to his chest.

  “Now . . . I know you! Don’t tell me. I never . . . never forget a name! No, don’t tell me.”

  He drained his beer and was about to stand up, on the pretext of going to the bar, when she said, “Hendrick, that’s it! Matt Hendrick!”

  He smiled, despite his annoyance. “Well done,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind . . .”

  “What?” She opened her eyes wide. “You’re going? But we’ve hardly said hello!”

  “I’m sorry. I really must . . .”

  “What? You’re going to take the train to the interior, looking for . . . for whoever it is you’re looking for?”

  He stared at her. “How do you know?”

  “I’m a telepath,” she said. She attempted to keep a straight face, but the alcohol in her system would not comply. “Not really. I overheard you speaking earlier with the tourists, silly! I was just behind you.”

  “Ah . . .”

  He activated his wrist-com and showed her the pix. “You might have seen her, spoken to her . . . She was with a tall, good-looking man.”

  She squinted at the pix and nodded. “I saw her. I mean, how could I miss her. She’s beautiful . . .”

  “But you didn’t speak?”

  She shook her head. “No. She . . . She wasn’t suffering the after-effects of the transmission like you.”

  He nodded and made to get up.

  Her huge eyes registered pantomime disappointment. “You’re going so soon?”

  “I have a train to catch.”

  She pressed her finger against his chest again. “You won’t catch a train at this time of night, my friend.”

  “I won’t? And why is that?”

  “Because the Avoel won’t allow it.”

  He stared at her. “They won’t?”

  She put the neck of her beer bottle to her full lips, tilted the bottle, and drank. “It’s because . . . because they don’t like people travelling at night. The darkness is sacred. As is the sky. That . . . That’s why they don’t allow air-cars either. Just ground cars and monotrains. The sky is sacred, not to be violated. And . . . And as we are guests on their planet, we must comply. So the founding fathers and mothers of our colony agreed, two hundred years ago.”

  Something in her tone prompted him to ask, “And what do you think of the Avoel?”

  She stared at him, blinking. “I . . . I think they are evil,” she said, surprising him.

  “You do? And why is that?”

  Her face crumpled and she wept. She made an instant effort at recovery, wiping her wet cheeks with the inside of her wrists and saying, “It’s nothing! Ignore me. I’m drunk.”

  She looked up, attracted the attention of a waiter, and ordered two more beers.

  When they came, she took a small sip and smiled at Hendrick. “So . . . will you tell me why you are looking for . . . for these people?”

  “It’s a private matter. I can’t discuss it.”

  She pulled a prim frown, mocking him. “Are you a detective? Is that it? Do you detect missing people?”

  “No, nothing like that,” he said, wondering if she were indeed a telepath. “But . . . tell me, if the people I need to tr
ace left on a train yesterday, bound for the interior, have you any idea where they might have been heading?”

  She sat suddenly upright on her chair, staring at him. “On Thursdays . . . there is only one train, and it stops only at its destination, Allay.”

  “So they must have alighted there?”

  She nodded, hiccupped, and took another swallow of beer.

  “And is there a train to Allay tomorrow?”

  She nodded. “At two.”

  He saluted her with his beer. “Thank you . . .” he began.

  “Tiana,” she said, supplying her name with a smile. “Tiana Tandra.”

  He made to rise and said, “My thanks, Tiana. Perhaps we’ll meet again when I leave Avoeli.”

  He could see her come to some decision, and a split-second later she jumped from her chair into his lap. He was surprised by her lightness, and then by his involuntary reaction to the pressure of her bottom against his groin. She moved her lips to his ear and whispered, “Take me back to your hotel, Mr Hendrick. Matt.”

  He felt the warmth of her flesh through her dress. How long had it been since his wife had left him, since he’d last felt a woman like this? He’d avoided such contact, telling himself that it would only remind him of Maatje’s betrayal.

  He said, “I never take advantage, Tiana, of drunken women,” and felt like a prude.

  “In that case . . .” She looked over his shoulder and snapped something in her own language to a passing waiter. He stopped, reached into his pocket, and produced a silver blister-pack. She passed the man a crumpled banknote, pressed out a pill, and held it up before Hendrick’s eyes.

  “Sobertab,” she said, placing it on her tongue. She took a mouthful of beer, swallowed, and stared at him.

  “There, now I am as sober a . . . a, what do you say, a magistrate?”

  Smiling, he eased her from his lap and stood up. “And, sober, you realise that you’ve just propositioned a total stranger and . . .”

  “Not so fast, Matt.” She laid a hand on his chest tenderly. “Look, I’m taking the same train as you tomorrow. I . . . There’s something I must do in the jungle town where the train stops. So . . . we can accompany each other.” She smiled. “I’ll be your guide. And I . . . I might even be able to help you find who you’re looking for.”