The Balaan commands reverence. It stands as the oldest living thing in all the Wieta Lands. The motions of three hundred and eighty-four seasons have passed through its branches since it was planted, on the day of the Arrival, in the year of Returning, when Saebi’s Vision brought the remaining twenty-nine Clans of the Elokoi out of the desert, back from the eastern lands, to Vaana. Back to the land of the Ancestors.
And high in those branches, clinging to the ancient bark, Kaeba looks down, her huge eyes seeking his.
Loef grasps the tree and begins to climb . . .
– Ciiv has never seen a cub quite like her. And Ciiv has taught the young ones the Thoughtsongs for more years than anyone can remember.
The thought runs out, and Loef looks across at Raatal, his mother. She watches Kaeba from the doorway of the shelter, and there is the pride of kinship in the colour of her mind-tone, as she continues.
– Ciiv says Kaeba has the love. One hearing, and she can repeat a Song or a Story with every tone and every emotion. The legends say that Saebi herself was such a cub. If ever there was a young one who was born to the Telling, Kaeba is destined—
– If she survives that long, Loef interrupts. Did you know, I had to climb the Balaan this afternoon and carry your ‘born Teller’ down on my back?
But there is no venom in his tone. He loves Kaeba.
Everyone loves Kaeba.
He moves across to the doorway and stands beside his mother, looking in the same direction. Across the Greenspace, Kaeba withdraws her attention from Ciiv the old Teacher and looks back at the two of them.
– Saliba, Loef. She sends the formal greeting, but with a thought-tone that hints at mischief. Saliba, kinmother Raatal.
But Ciiv has spent too many years Teaching the young ones to be ignored. She bespeaks the cub silently in mind-speech, and Kaeba returns her full attention to the lesson.
The old Teacher looks across at the pair in the doorway and nods slightly, then turns back to the cub.
Loef looks at his mother. And his nervousness leaks past the mind-shield. She returns his stare.
– What is it, Loef? You have been prowling the village for day, with all the control of a Yorum in the mating season. Speak to your mother.
She sits on her bed-platform and indicates a spot next to her. He obeys the wordless order and sits down beside her.
She waits. Finally, he begins.
– Juuls returns to the island of Caarmody tomorrow. He has invited me to go with him. To see the school and his friends. He says I can learn much about the humans. And that I can teach them much. About the Elokoi . . .
Raatal gazes out of the window in the direction of the Great Desert. Then she places a long-fingered hand on her firstson’s arm.
– On the island, she begins, they have excellent teachers. And Cael the Teller lives there for five months of every year, as his mother and grandmother did before him. He shares the Songs and the Stories and the Journeys with the special young humans of the island, and teaches them about the Elokoi way. Things which you are yet too young to understand so well yourself, my son.
She can feel the disappointment building in him. Loef would never argue with her decision, of course, but he is young. He is quite capable of allowing his emotions to leak out. Just slightly. Just enough to let you know how he feels about being denied.
It is behaviour unacceptable in a mature Elokoi, but for the young, rules and acceptable behaviours are things to be tested.
She turns to look at him. He is his father’s son.
Mael, her firstmate, is still the only one of her three mates who can make her do things against her best judgment.
She stands, looking down at him. Then her mind-tone softens. Just a touch.
– But, she continues, there is a time in life when it is good to be challenged. And to learn from experience. Your father lived with the special humans on the island when he was not much older than you are now. And it taught him many things. I think that my firstson could do worse than to learn those things too.
She holds his gaze while the meaning sinks in. Then the wave of his excitement washes over her, and he leans forward to touch foreheads.
– I will tell Juuls.
And he is running for the door.
Halfway across the Greenspace he stops and looks back.
– Thank you, Mother.
Then he is gone.
Raatal turns back into the hut and moves towards the cooking fire. For a few months there will be more room in the hut. And more food in the store-cupboards.
She is missing him already.
Al-Tiina Village
Wieta Clan Lands, Vaana
25/14/202 Standard
JULES’S STORY
Right up to the last minute I wasn’t sure the old tyrant would really let him go.
In spite of that tough exterior, you couldn’t help loving Raatal, but she was stubborn, and if she got hard-line on something, a stampeding Utiina herd wouldn’t make her change her mind.
Loef was her favourite – which was natural, I suppose. Not because he was her firstson, which is almost as important among the Wieta as a firstdaughter. It was more than that. It was Loef himself.
Loef was always special. He didn’t have any particular talent. Nothing you could point at and say that’s what Loef was really good at. He wasn’t an artist, or particularly good with the Thoughtsongs or the Stories. He didn’t have a way with the crops that the Wieta rely on so heavily. And he was too young to hunt, so no one knew how good he’d be at that.
Loef was just . . . Well, he was understanding, I guess you’d say.
I know, all Elokoi are, to a large extent. But Loef’s capacity for understanding was amazing, even for an Elokoi.
He was special. And he was my friend. That was why I wanted him to come to the island with me.
I wanted him to learn. About us. The few hundred of us on Carmody Island, and all the thirty-eight million other humans on Deucalion.
Don’t ask why. I’m not sure it was a thought-out thing. In fact, I know it wasn’t. It was just something I felt strongly about.
Loef was going to achieve something great. I didn’t know what, but I knew that he was destined for it. And I knew that he was going to need to understand human ways a whole lot better than any Elokoi before him had ever understood them, if he was going to be ready when the moment came.
At exactly midday the flyer from Carmody touched down on the Greenspace of Al-Tiina village and we said our farewells.
I stood and watched as Loef touched foreheads with Kaeba, his cousin. After that, it was his siblings – Kaalis and Hiejha his sisters, and Raanji, his baby brother. Then, formally, he touched with Hailf, his mother’s thirdmate, Zhial, her secondmate, and Mael, his truefather, and Raatal’s firstmate.
And finally he faced his mother. She took his face in her hands and touched her head to his. It was the gentlest gesture I think I ever saw her make.
Then she turned and walked away towards the hut without looking back. Not even a glance. It was her way, I suppose. Elokoi females are strong, and they don’t show their emotions easily.
Loef watched her for a moment longer, then turned towards the flyer.
I took a last look around the village and followed him.
4
Premonitions
(Extracts from the works of Natassia Eiken translated to Archive Disk with the author’s permission, 12/14/212 Standard. Used with the author’s consent.)
From: Standing on Ararat – The Crystal Death, Ten Years On (Prologue)
. . . Quarantine. The word probably derives from the Old Earth Italian, quarantina, meaning ‘forty days’. Which is how long they would isolate people in ancient times when they were suspected of suffering from or having contact with the most deadly of the contagious diseases. Diseases like
the Black Death, or leprosy or typhoid fever.
In the days before immunisation, antibiotics and electron- microscope screening, and prior to the development of genetically engineered antibody technology, there was little else that could be done. Contamination with a contagious, life-threatening infection placed not only the victim but the whole community at risk, and although enforced isolation may seem cruel and barbaric to modern sensibilities, it was truly a matter of communal survival. A sacrifice of the few for the good of the many.
From the time of the earliest attempts at space-flight, in the latter half of the twentieth century Earth standard, stringent precautions were taken to avoid contamination by exotic alien viruses, or organisms and parasites that might find human hosts irresistible.
Even the astronauts who made the early expeditions to Earth’s dead and airless moon were thoroughly screened and quarantined (though not for forty days!) on their return.
Of course, prior to landfall on planets with atmosphere and identifiable life forms, there was really very little risk of encountering the ‘doomsday’ bugs of twentieth century science fiction. And as journeys to habitable planets were, by virtue of the distances and times involved, generally one-way journeys, the risk of such infections returning to the Earth was considered minimal . . .
Complex of the Ruling Council
New Geneva (Central)
25/14/202
CHARLIE’S STORY
Devol Eldritch stood up at the head of the table, interrupting Galen’s presentation. I watched Galen bristle, but he said nothing, waiting to hear the man out.
‘Thank you for taking us through the data, Dr Sibraa, but to be frank, given the remoteness of the risk you describe, I can’t see how the Council can even consider committing the kind of funds you’re talking about. Not to mention the Construction and Security resources that would have to be redeployed at such short notice.’
He hadn’t really been listening to the briefing. He’d taken in just enough to decide we were spitting in the wind, and he was preparing to blow us off.
I suppose you couldn’t really blame him. At that stage all we had was one forty-year-old memo, and some Research data from the same period, smuggled to me by someone who was risking his reputation, his funding and probably his whole career to do it – which, it had already been pointed out more than once, was exactly the kind of eccentric behaviour which made him a pretty unstable witness to rely on in the first place.
One suspect memo and two young, relatively inexperienced medical Researchers from Edison, with a horror scenario to sell – which must have sounded a whole lot more like science fiction than a realistic threat.
If it hadn’t been for Galen’s rep, we wouldn’t even have got as far as this.
After all, there were no recorded outbreaks of this mysterious Crystal Death in any of the official literature from Earth, and it didn’t help that the Global Health Organisation itself wasn’t even an official World Government authority.
Eldritch finished speaking and fixed Galen with a practised superior stare, expecting . . . what? Capitulation?
Big mistake.
Galen stared right back, and I could recognise the signs. Hell, I’d seen them often enough back in Edison.
He manoeuvred the wheelchair subtly so that he faced Eldritch full-on, and his eyes seemed to glaze over for maybe three seconds. He was counting silently to himself, focusing, getting ready for the counterattack.
If I’d had the nerve, I’d probably have told Galen to pull his head in. Our hand was one card short of a pair as it was. The last thing we wanted to do was antagonise anyone – especially ‘his majesty’ Devol Eldritch – at that stage in the proceedings.
But, of course, I didn’t have the nerve. I was out of my depth, and I guess it must have shown, because Galen had taken over the presentation from the moment, ten minutes earlier, when Tolbert, the President’s personal representative on the committee, had started attacking our proposals.
But Galen wasn’t presenting anything now. He was dangerously quiet, and Eldritch must have finally sensed what was about to happen, because the benign superior look began to turn nasty.
He was a seasoned campaigner, on the rise. No Research geek was going to stare him down.
Deputy Security Chief Devol Eldritch was Security Supremo Milton Beresford’s protégé, and Milton Beresford was one of President Müller’s oldest political allies. You didn’t get into a pissing contest with someone that well connected, even if he was a certified, twenty-four carat, ego-maniacal jerk-off – which Devol Eldritch also just happened to be.
I tore my gaze from Eldritch’s angry sneer and looked across the room to where Galen sat in his wheelchair facing the gathered luminaries of the committee. He had his punchboard on the small table attached to the front of his chair, and the read-out was ether-linked to the huge screen that filled the wall behind him.
It showed the computer-generated epidemic projections, based on all the data available to us, assuming that just one of the passengers of the approaching C-Ship Pandora was infected with CRIOS and made it out into the general population of New Geneva.
And it was terrifying to anyone with the imagination to see it.
Galen took a deep breath, pointed very deliberately towards the screen, and fixed Eldritch with the glare he saved for particularly stupid opponents who refused to accept the obvious.
By now the silence was almost physical, and he held the pose, forcing everyone present – except Eldritch – to focus on the data displayed there before them.
Galen was never one to suffer fools gladly. He’d always preferred to make them suffer – and he was extremely good at it. He had a biting wit, and he could demolish you with a few well-chosen words. But for all his smarts, he’d never quite learned the trick of knowing when to turn it off.
I knew him probably better than any other living soul, and I could name every one of his numerous good qualities, but it didn’t blind me to the fact that he was what you might call socially retarded. Brilliant, totally focused when it came to his work, but a complete idiot when it came to dealing with people outside the Research labs – and a lot of people inside the labs, if you were being perfectly honest.
If he wasn’t so essential to the department, they’d probably have ditched him in the first few months after we got there and saved a lot of fence-mending.
But it wasn’t an ego thing, not really. He didn’t put people down just to look good himself. He put them down if they got in the way of what Galen Sibraa, boy genius, knew was best – which usually was best.
Galen had the gift of seeing the wood for the trees, which in medical research is the difference between success and failure ninety-nine per cent of the time.
Unfortunately, at that moment we weren’t discussing points of scientific procedure in a Research panel. We were trying to convince the President’s health emergency advisory committee that there was a potential threat which needed the immediate attention of the Ruling Council.
The committee-members weren’t scientists for the most part. They were bureaucrats, bean counters and would-be politicians, 2ICs from most of the appropriate sections: Budget, Security, Health – that kind of thing. And, like I said, it was only Galen’s reputation that had got us into the same building as them, let alone arguing our case.
But he wasn’t going to get anywhere unless he understood where they were coming from. You didn’t bully them. You certainly didn’t insult them. And Galen was doing his best to do both.
I could see their faces closing over, as he went on. ‘The thing is, Mr Eldritch’ – he even managed to make the guy’s name sound like an insult – ‘it may well sound like a “remote possibility”, but if that remote possibility turns into a fact, it’ll be too late to say “I told you so”, and the only consolation you’ll have, sir, is that we’ll probably all be dead long before anyone w
orks out who’s responsible and hauls our arses over the coals.’
I watched their faces. Maybe he wasn’t as out of touch as I’d feared. Accountability. Suddenly he’d hit them where it hurt.
But Tolbert, the President’s man, wasn’t fazed. Cut to the chase, calculate the bottom line and deal with it. You didn’t get to be Müller’s right hand by worrying about the niceties.
‘In that case,’ he began, ‘I vote that we turn the ships right around and send them straight back to Earth. Let them deal with the problem.’
He said it with a totally straight face. As if he was discussing a shipment of damaged imports. The guy was ice-cold, and I realised just how out of our depth we were.
With hindsight, I can’t help thinking that his suggestion would quite likely have stopped the horror that eventually occurred before it ever had a chance to begin. For us, if not for Earth.
But, of course, solutions are rarely that simple. At least, not while things are actually happening.
And even if they are simple, they’re not always possible.
I mean, suppose you could actually agree that it was the safest course – or the necessary one – for us to turn all three C-ships around and send them back. How easy would it be to just callously write off almost a hundred thousand innocent people? People who had given up absolutely everything to make a new life on a new world.
Our world. And at our invitation.
For Tolbert, it was a viable option. For Galen, it wasn’t.
‘Yeah, right!’ he replied. ‘Amputate the leg because you’re worried there might be something wrong with it. Most people would prefer to run tests first – to see if there’s anything to worry about.’
He shifted his attention from Tolbert and Eldritch to the rest of the committee.
‘Some of you are from Earth originally. You know what sending them back means. Another forty or fifty years in stasis, which puts them at the extreme limit of survivable freeze-sleep. Half of them might not make it back in one piece.’
He was playing them. I watched the uncomfortable looks growing on their faces, as he continued. ‘And even if they did make it, even if the authorities on Earth chose to accept the risk that we were too self-righteous to accept’ – now he fixed Tolbert with “the look” – ‘what kind of future could they look forward to when they got there? Fifty years out, another fifty back. A century out of date, with no resources to start over with.
View from Ararat Page 4
