Under Nameless Stars

by Christian Schoon

  Jules ignored her complaint and fussed with the belt holding the scabbard of his sword. His pirate costume included a long red velvet coat stained with gunpowder splotches over a peach satin shirt with clouds of frilly lace sprouting at neck and wrists. One mech-hand had been replaced with a large plastic hook, and his mech-legs sported thigh-high synth-leather boots. A plumed, tri-cornered hat perched jauntily just behind his blowhole. The only distracting element was the gray tail flukes extending out between his coattails.

  Why couldn’t you be the mermaid? she thought irritably. You’re already halfway there…

  “You are forlorn,” Jules said. “Is it due to our conversation before? About us leaving your friend Liam Tucker in the unhappy situation of the steerage decks?”

  “I should’ve found some way to contact him today. I told him I’d go back down to see him.” On the other hand, keeping her mind on finding Warra had kept her mind off worrying about Liam.

  “But we could not proceed to the steerage level undetected without the assistance of the steward Yed. And he was otherwise engaged in duties all the day long. It is not your fault.”

  “But he’ll think I forgot.”

  “We will arrange to see Liam Tucker tomorrow. And you can explain your failure as a friend then.” She gave him a “thanks a lot” look. “Come. We’ll be the talk of the party.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said. But there was nothing to do now but plunge in and make the best of it. The truth was, she still felt a little giddy from her discovery about the sickbay. And even if she had no immediate solution to her father’s whereabouts, at least this new clue gave her something concrete to hold onto. She peered into the hall full of chattering partygoers and took a deep breath.

  “Are my coconuts straight?”

  “Entirely. Let us go in. This will be… fun.” He offered her his arm. Smiling at the dolphin’s oddly comforting mimicry of human customs, Zenn put her hand on his metalloy arm and they waded into the noise and motion of the ballroom.

  The sight that greeted them inside the spacious hall made Zenn immediately forget about her costume. The Grand Ballroom was vast, with a tall ceiling capped by a faux stained-glass dome. The room held dozens of tables with ornate centerpieces and individual nametags for each place setting. At the far end of the hall a single long, linen-draped table sat on a raised platform. Swirling around the tables were scores of passengers in varying degrees of flamboyant disguise, all talking and laughing as they hunted for their nametags. Flower garlands and streamers hung from the ceiling. In one corner was a quartet of musicians – two human females with violins, a young Procyon male bowing a cello and a tall Sirenian coleopt, all four upper arms playing a double-necked bass viol. They were playing old-fashioned waltz music, but it was barely audible amid the guests’ talking and laughter. The sight of the coleopt brought to mind the hulking insectoid who’d confronted her down in steerage, and then made her miss Hamish and wonder how he was getting along without Liam to help out with the cloister’s never-ending list of chores.

  The boy, his dark hair worn long on one side in the Procyoni fashion, sparked memories of Fane Reth Fanneson, the Procyon youth who Zenn had first met several weeks ago at the cloister. Fane was an under-sacrist – a sort of chamber assistant to a starship’s Indra Groom. He was on Mars to pick up the whalehound owned by the royal family of the Leukkan Kire and transport the huge beast to its new home in one of the Kire’s planet-wide nature preserves. Zenn and Fane hadn’t exactly gotten along. They’d argued about the Procyon’s spiritual beliefs – or, as Zenn would have it, Procyon superstitions. She wondered if Fane might even be at the party but, after considering the possibility, decided it seemed unlikely. He wasn’t exactly the costume ball type.

  Here and there, Gliesian waiters and waitresses trotted among the partygoers, proffering trays of drinks and appetizers. Zenn took a glass of punch off one of the passing trays, and Jules helped himself to a tall mug of frothy ale.

  “Ahoy and avast,” he declared as he clinked his glass against Zenn’s and downed his drink with a flourish.

  “If you say so,” she said doubtfully, taking a sip of punch and scanning the scene. Humans and Asents of all sizes and body shapes paraded past – a Reticulan, its great bulk draped in a fairy costume complete with little wings; a colonist woman dressed as what seemed to be a zombie ballerina; another human with the uniform, helmet and muon-pick of an asteroid miner. Some unidentifiable short being – a Skirni? – buried beneath the stuffed tentacles and multiple eye-pods of a Kiran millivipe almost ran into her, swerved at the last second and veered back into the mass of revelers.

  A brilliant red dinosaur-like outfit teetering atop two pairs of double-jointed insectoid legs wobbled past, with two voices inside offering muffled apologies as they bumped into those in their path. Whatever they were meant to be, Zenn decided they were enjoying themselves.

  “Look there,” Jules said, excited, pointing to the far exit. “A Skirni. Is that the one you seek? Is that this Pokt person?”

  Zenn’s pulse rate raced at the thought. The squat little alien who entered the hall was dressed as an Earther circus clown, complete with baggy yellow pants, floppy shoes and a red, bulbous nose. The effect was vaguely sinister. But no. It wasn’t Pokt.

  “It’s Thrott,” Zenn said. “The one you were gambling with before. See behind him? His slave?”

  “Yes. My mistake.”

  It appeared for a moment that Thrott had spotted Jules. Had he recognized Zenn in her costume? If so, he didn’t acknowledge the fact. A moment later, both he and his slave vanished into the milling throng of guests.

  At the nearest table, Zenn’s attention was drawn to a pack of Alcyons. They were squabbling over who sat where. Their gangly lizard forms were all cloaked in identical rodentlike costumes, their pointed snouts and flicking tongues sticking out of fuzzy-eared hoods. Zenn wondered if they thought it humorous to dress as their own prey. It struck her as kind of creepy.

  She was about to ask Jules his opinion about this when one of the Gliesian waiters turned around to offer them appetizers. It was Yed.

  “There you are.” He seemed relieved they had shown up. “The Captain is eager to meet you. And also, I can confirm that I relayed the communication to Mars which you gave to me. It was sent off by the ship’s comm officer this same hour.”

  Now that the Helen had moved well beyond Mars orbit, Zenn had decided it was safe to let Otha know what she’d done. It would be too late now for her to be sent back.

  “Thank you, Yed,” she told the steward. “I appreciate your help.”

  “It is my honor. Please…” He gestured to a small circle of guests standing near the central raised platform. “This way.”

  In the circle’s center stood a tall human male in a dazzling dress-white uniform. Broad-shouldered, his craggy, weathered face wore a close-cropped white beard that perfectly complemented his sparkling blue eyes. He was every inch the ideal ship’s officer. In fact, he looked more like a cartoon of a Captain than the real thing. As she approached him through the crowd, Zenn saw that the man’s entire body shimmered with the minute, telltale static of a personal holo-projector image.

  “Guest Bodine, Guest Vancouver,” Yed said eagerly, “may I present Captain Yoolis-En Oolo of the Lumiliner Helen of Troy.”

  “A pleasure. Glad to have you both aboard.” The Captain spoke in a deep, husky Earther drawl as he extended a hand for Zenn to shake. Zenn was certain it wasn’t his real voice. And the hand she shook clearly wasn’t human. Beneath the holo-projected pixels, her hand was gripped by what felt like thin, bony digits with leathery skin and small, sharp tips – a bird’s claw? “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did for my Cleevus. She’s never sounded better! You’ll hear for yourself later tonight. She’s doing excerpts from Tlanpoh’s ‘Ecstasy of the Hatchling Pool’. Do you know it?”

  “Um, no, sorry.”

  “An operetta. Gliesian, actually. Selecte
d in honor of the Helen’s indispensable stewards.” The Captain rested a hand on Yed’s shoulder. “Especially this one.” Yed’s smile threatened to overflow his cheeks. “It’s thanks to you and Yed that my little mudlark is able to show off her talents tonight. You’re obviously an exovet who knows her fungal-animoids. Where did you study, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “The Ciscan cloister, near Arsia City,” she told him. But before she could explain she wasn’t a full-fledge exoveterinarian yet, they were interrupted by a high, piping sound like a tin whistle.

  “The signal for dinner. We’d best head to the table,” the Captain said. “You’ll be on my left.” He gestured, and Zenn realized the Captain’s table was the one set up on the raised platform. She wished yet again she’d made a more understated costuming choice as she hiked up her awkward tailpiece and struggled up the steps to take her seat.

  Glancing out at the room, her attention was drawn by something approaching through the milling crowd. It proceeded toward them with an unusual bobbing movement. It took Zenn a moment to realize it wasn’t a costumed passenger she was seeing, but something much more interesting.

  TEN

  A glimpse of a translucent dome with aquamarine zebra striping was visible over the heads of the partygoers. Zenn saw then that the strange, undulating movement of the approaching creature was because it wasn’t walking on legs but was instead hovering several feet off the floor.

  The Cepheian’s face reminded Zenn of a blowfish, with two pale eyes, no nose and a permanently pursed-lipped expression on the tiny mouthpart, all crowded into a small area beneath the bulging, dome-shaped mantle above it. The body resembled nothing so much as a huge jellyfish: a five-foot-wide half sphere of see-through tissue, with multiple pastel-colored organs and gas sacs visible within. Hanging down from the dome’s circumference were dozens of delicate, string-like gripping appendages and, most extraordinary of all, four ovoid globes of transparent skin. Suspended in each sphere was a single, diminutive consort – the water-breathing males of the species.

  A chorus of high-pitched Transvox voices emanated from the males.

  “Excuse us.” “Coming through.” “Tight squeeze.” “Make room here, feh?”

  Floating in their individual compartments of nutrient-rich fluid, the males looked like foot-long brine shrimp, each one waving four spindly arms tipped with feathery filaments that were once hands but had long since lost that function. Their blood-red eyes blinked as the males pressed up against the membranes of their spheres, straining to make out the surroundings beyond.

  As Zenn had only recently learned in Otha’s comparative physiology class, this kind of bizarre female/male symbiosis was a rare, but not unheard-of, survival technique. It was a kind of sexual dimorphism where the larger female animal carried her male counterparts along with her. It had been documented in a number of deep-sea fish on Earth as well as several marine creatures in the under-ice oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The Cepheian’s gas giant homeworld of Eta Cephei, with its vast, sparsely populated cloud realms, was in some ways similar to the barren underwater deserts of the Earth and Europa. In these environments, locating a mate in all that empty water or air could be a life-or-death proposition. Still, it was an amazing thing to consider – solving the problem of how find a breeding partner by having your would-be husbands literally attached at the hip.

  “Do you know what that is?” Jules whispered in Zenn’s ear as the Cepheian wafted its way toward their table. “I’ll wager you do not.”

  “Jules,” Zenn whispered back. “It’s a Cepheian drifter. And I’m not sure they’d appreciate us betting on what they are.”

  “Sorry. You’re right,” Jules said. “And I see now I would have lost my wager. Thank you for your frankness.”

  It was, however, the first drifter Zenn had ever seen outside of a v-film, and she had to

  admit it was a most remarkable sight.

  “Ambassador Noom,” the Captain addressed the hovering creature when it reached the front of the platform, “you’ll be here on my right.”

  The Cepheian’s self-generated mix of methane, hydrogen sulfide and other lighter-than-air gases filled its large balloon-like mantle and acted as both a lifting agent and propellant. The mechanism was much like the gas bladders that lined the undersides of the wings that bore giant Kiran sunkillers aloft. Zenn’s nose crinkled at the rotten-egg aroma that descended over the table as the drifter drew closer.

  The Cepheian rose up over the platform and settled lightly on the back of the chair next to the Captain. Zenn saw then it wasn’t a chair but a specially constructed perch like a tall, sculpted “T” rising from a weighted base. Several of the Cepheian’s gripping tendrils wrapped themselves around the upper crossbar, anchoring the body in place like a large, tethered balloon.

  “Grab there.” “No, there.” “Too close.” “Squashed here, feh.”

  The agitated males all spoke more or less at once, making it difficult to understand them. It occurred to Zenn that carrying your multiple mates around with you all the time was clearly a mixed biological blessing. Apparently the female was of a like mind. She reached a tendril up to the Transvox unit attached to her side and dialed down the volume on the translator. The consorts continued to complain and mutter, but at a much lower level.

  “This is Ambassador Noom Surishta Voikunoybo,” the Captain said to Zenn and Jules. “She and her staff are en route back to Eta Cephei. The ambassador has just come from a rather historic visit to Earth.” The Captain sat, then addressed the Cepheian. “I understand congratulations are in order, Ambassador. I believe you’ve achieved a breakthrough of sorts.”

  “Of sorts, yes, Captain,” the ambassador replied, her pleasing, velvety voice at odds with her – their? – exotic appearance. Unlike her consorts, she didn’t use a Transvox, and Zenn was impressed at her lack of accent. If you couldn’t see who was speaking, you might well mistake her for a native Earther. “This was only an initial contact, of course,” she went on. “But I can honestly describe our talks as both wide-ranging and constructive.”

  “Can we now hope starships of the Accord will once again be welcomed in Earth orbit?”

  “Time will tell, Captain. If future meetings are as productive, it’s certainly a possibility.”

  “Providing,” the Captain said, “the Ghost Shepherds leave us one or two ships to get around in.”

  “Captain Oolo–” Noom’s tone was reprimanding “–as you well know, the Indra problem is of unknown origin. Suggesting otherwise only leads to wild speculation. Ghost Shepherds! Seriously, what next? Tales of Indra ships whisked away by goblins?”

  “Ghost Shepherds,” Jules said. “I have heard this name. They are thought to be spirit-beings of some form, yes?”

  The ambassador swiveled to face Jules. “It is a religious belief among the Procyoni who attend the Indra. The Indra starship grooms and their sacrists believe the Shepherds are an ancient supernatural race who first harnessed the power of the Indra. Ghost Shepherds are alleged to keep their stonehorses stabled in a distant, uncharted star system so remote no other sentient being has ever set eyes upon it. This fact, these Procyoni say, explains why no one has ever actually seen a Ghost Shepherd. Very convenient, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “But, it is true that the appearance of the first Indra ship remains a peculiar and unresolved mystery, is it not?” Jules said. “That first vast ship was discovered simply floating about at the very boundary of mapped space all those years ago. And it was found empty of all life except for its great Indra, so it could not be said who built it. Or who left it for the Procyoni to find. Perhaps it was left by these haunting Shepherds.”

  “Yes,” Noom said. “The Procyoni stumbling upon that first ship so close to their homeworld was a nice bit of fortune, I will admit.”

  That’s an understatement, Zenn thought. Finding the first, derelict Indra ship within sublight distance of Procyon was the only reason interstellar flight existed at all
. Up until that moment, no science known to human or Asent had been able to unlock the riddle of how to travel between the stars. The distances were simply too vast, the power requirements too huge, the technological obstacles too baffling. But after the Procyoni discovered the astounding ability of that single Indra, they were then able to take their first tentative steps into space beyond their star. The following discovery of the Indra herd feeding off the dark matter whirlpools circling a nearby globular cluster meant more Indra ships could be built, and they soon were. But it was that first colossal stroke of fate, that first abandoned Indra vessel, that led to the Procyoni making First Contact with Earth. That single ship became the seed of the fleet that now knitted together the planets and civilizations of the Local Systems Accord. It was almost enough to make one believe in ghostly aliens and supernatural doings… if one wer inclined in that direction.

  “And there are more suitably mystical facts,” Noom went on, clearly enjoying herself. “According to the sacred books of the Procyoni, every now and then the Shepherds return to round up their far-flung Indra herds and drive them home again. This is in order to bring their stonehorses back to their hidden breeding grounds, to produce more Indra. And if the Shepherds should not perform this epic task, so the texts tell us, the Indra will be offended and refuse to grant the Procyoni or other Asents the power of star travel. A pretty fairytale. But only that.” The Cepheian paused, then looked from Jules and Zenn to the Captain.

  “Oh, forgive me, Ambassador,” the Captain said, gesturing at his guests. “This is Jules Vancouver, of Earth.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Ambassador Noom… voykin…” Jules stammered to a halt.

  “Omma Tsantis Iph Sharor Tus Florim Shardahla Noom Surishta Voiykenoiboh Noomdrass-Liquissi,” the Cepheian said. “But please, you must call us Noom.”

  “We’re Noom Noomdrass.” “All Noomdrass.” “Liquissi as well.” “Liquissi family of Noomdrass, feh?” the male consorts babbled softly.