House of Reeds ittotss-2

by Thomas Harlan

  Rubbing his stubbly chin, Parker was puzzled for a moment before he realized the odd layout of the buildings was caused by the presence of broad, curved boulevards looping across the city. Hundreds of tiny, straight streets intersected them at unnatural angles. Weird. Why did they build everything all higgle-piggle like that? Crazy aliens.

  Gretchen sat down on the end of her 'hummock' and began digging in her duffel. All of their heavy dig equipment – tents, analysis sensors, environment suits, hand tools – was in storage at the port, in the dubious care of the Albanian Spaceways office. Thankfully, she'd thought to stow a clutch of threesquares in her personal effects. Just the effort of finding them made her feel faint. Too big a day for us. Oh yeah.

  "Here," she said, pitching a bright blue and orange food bar to the pilot. "I really don't think we should risk room service. Though, Maggie, they might have something live for you to eat…"

  "Not hungry." Magdalena had curled up in a corner on the wool blanket, plush tail over her nose, as far as she could get from the 'hummocks.'

  "Right." Gretchen began chewing on the molй-flavored ration bar. It sure didn't taste like chocolatl. They never did, no matter what the advertisements said.

  The office of the Imperial Attachй for Antiquities had tall windows opening on a garden filled with riotous blossoms. Something like a rhododendron tree shaded the windows, heavy boughs of pinkish red flowers hanging against the open shutters. Gretchen was sweating mildly, sitting in a wide-backed chair covered with leopard skin.

  While the rest of the Legation was air conditioned and dim, this room was bright, sunny and warm. Around the garden, three stories of windows set into whitewashed, ivy-covered brick reached up to a murky yellow sky. Despite thunderstorms growling and muttering through the night, the pollution hanging over the city had not been washed away.

  "Hmmm." The attachй made a noncommittal noise, his head bent over Gretchen's identity papers and transit visa. She guessed the windows in this room were flung wide to embrace the hot, tropical smell of the flowers outside because the slim young man sitting across from her was a Mixtec. A climate like this would remind him very much of home. She had never seen the great cities of Timbuktu or Ax Idah or Brass herself, but articles in the travel magazines endemic to starliner waiting lounges indicated gorgeous architecture, sprawling gardens and a lively social life. The old Mйxica colonies in sub-Saharan Afrika had flourished after the end of the War.

  He looked up, fine-boned features sharp under dark cocoa skin. The young man's face held such a look of seriousness Anderssen was struck by unexpected sadness. Such a handsome man should be letting himself live a little more. Just a tiny bit. Does he remember how to smile?

  "I am sorry, Anderssen-tzin, but I cannot give you a survey permit for any region on Jagan." He gathered her papers together and put them into a folder. "I understand you've wound up here by accident, more or less, but an exclusionary planetary excavation, analysis and recovery grant has already been made to the University of Tetzcoco department of Extrasolar Anthropology."

  Gretchen grimaced. Tetzcoco EXA had quite a reputation. She tried to hide her reaction, but the young man's eyebrows rose in surprise.

  "Have you worked with Professor Der Sege before?"

  "Not directly, Soumake-tzin. But I spent two years on Old Mars working for one of his graduate students. He has a towering reputation among my peers."

  "Does he?" The attachй rose from his chair and moved to the window, long-fingered hands tapping on the sill. "Well, I have only met with him once or twice since my arrival." Soumake turned, still dreadfully serious. "He is – in my personal opinion – an ass of a man, with half the sense. I do not know what kind of agreement my predecessor struck with the local princes, but Sege is running his own fiefdom up at Fehrupur and I doubt the local kujen would care if a hundred tons of artifacts were being shipped out every month. He'd be using his cut of the proceeds to buy guns."

  Anderssen settled a little in her chair, realizing the attache was giving her a particularly searching look. "You're…um…worried about smuggling?"

  "I am." Soumake leaned against the window. Like most of the officials and staff Gretchen had seen while wending her way through the halls of the Legation, he was dressed in a long, narrow-cut cotton mantle over a light shirt and dark pants. She sighed inwardly to see he carried off the look very well. Most people in official costume looked like they were wearing a tent…

  "Jagan is an ancient world, Anderssen-tzin. Some estimates place the first remnants of civilization here at over a million years old. That verges on First Sun times. Rare to find such a world continuously inhabited over such a vast span of years. One wonders what might lie buried beneath the cities in the hinterland. SГє is hoping for glory, I'm sure."

  He looked down at her papers again, now packed up in a dark olive folder. "I am also aware of the reputation enjoyed by the Honorable Chartered Company. Not one which shouts 'academic integrity' or 'law-abiding,' is it?"

  Gretchen tried not to squirm and regretted taking a stab at a legal professional presence on this world. But I'm supposed to inform the authorities! They told me to get a permit!

  "I'm not…I'm not here on official Company business, Soumake-tzin. We finished a project on Shimanjin and had some free time. The Company doesn't care how I get back home, as long as I pay any difference in the ticket. I missed my connection at Tadmor Station and the next ship out was the Star of Naxos and it was coming through here. Reading about the worlds on the liner-run piqued my interest in Jagan, so I thought I'd spend some time sightseeing before the next liner arrives."

  The attache's expression did not change. "You picked a bad time."

  Gretchen nodded, striving for a suitably morose expression. It came easily. "We saw the Fleet landing at the spaceport while we were waiting at Customs. Is there trouble brewing?"

  A rich, melodious laugh burst from the Mixtec and he shook his head, the flash of a grin lighting his face. The moment passed as quickly as it had come. "Brewing? My dear lady, the valley of the Five Rivers is well past brewing…on the edge of explosion I think." He sat down.

  "Between Capsia in the northwest and Patala on the southern coast there are sixty kujenates – principalities – and a dozen feudatory tribes. You may not have noticed yet, but the Jehanan are not the only sentient race resident on Jagan. To my knowledge, there are at least three others. Little love is lost between any of them. There are hundreds of religious sects, all quarreling with one another. In some districts there are entire armies of brigands roaming the countryside.

  "Labor unions have begun to spring up in the cities as industry catalyzes around new Imperial technologies. The factory owners negotiate with clubs, poison gas and murder. The mountains to the west are filled with semi-nomadic tribes – such as the Arachosians – whose livelihood is wholesale theft. East of the Phison, thankfully, is a harsh desert, because beyond the Ghor is the fiercely xenophobic empire of the Golden King.

  "Into this cookpot you thrust the Empire, the pochteca companies, our own missionary orders and the whole mixture boils far too fast."

  "We're not welcome here?" Gretchen indicated the luxurious room and the sprawling compound of the Legation beyond the betel wood doors. None of the buildings within an ancient, red-brick rampart showed the first sign of a hostile populace. There were no guard-posts, no machine guns, no waspwire.

  "On the contrary," Soumake said, running a hand across a perfectly smooth scalp. "Every single one of those factions, parties, sects, unions, gangs and princes wants our friendship desperately. Consider this – you are a scientist, you will understand: Jagan is old. Ancient. Worn down by thousands of generations of inhabitants. Entire civilizations have risen and then fallen again. Nuclear wars have smashed them back to savagery and they have clawed their way back up again. Twice the Jehanan have reached into space, only to tumble back at the last moment."

  The attachй sighed, pointing at a heavy glass case on one wall. "Consider this
metal fragment in an isolation case. Not sealed to protect the artifact, no, but to protect us from radiation permeating the metal casing inside. One of the metallurgists with the Tetzcoco expedition examined the item and confirmed what I had already surmised. Go ahead, take a good look."

  Gretchen stepped to the case and frowned. Inside was a stout-looking hexagonal rod, marked by two parallel indents. Faded, indecipherable lettering ran around the top in a band two fingers high. The metal shone silver, without any sign of age or decay.

  "This looks like the fuel cylinder for a power plant of some kind."

  Soumake nodded, spreading his hands. "An antimatter container, to be precise. Empty now. The antiparticles inside decayed long ago, suffusing the steel sheath with byproduct radiation. After the AM evaporated, the magnetic containment system inside shut down."

  "How old is it?" Gretchen measured the device with her hand, taking care not to touch the glass. "Where did it come from?"

  The attache rubbed his chin. "I purchased the 'holy relic' from a scrap metal dealer in Capsia last year. A trader from out of the cold waste beyond the mountains had brought it to him. A tentative estimate of the decay rate weighs in at several hundred thousand years. But here is what interests me… The lettering is avery, very early form of Jehanan. Much like you will see on the porticoes of their oldest temples today."

  Gretchen turned around, one pale blonde eyebrow rising. "You said the Jehanan civilizations had been destroyed before they could reach into space. Antimatter production facilities are nearly always built in orbit, outside a gravity well."

  Soumake nodded. "The physical xenoarchaeologists disagree with me, Anderssen-tzin. They say proof is lacking, but the biologists concur. The Jehanan are not native to this world. They came from space, as we have done, and conquered Jagan. What conflagration tore down their starfaring civilization I do not know…" He grimaced, making a motion which included the city outside the walls ofthe Legation. "…but the native princes are eager reach the stars again. As I said, Jagan is an old, old world."

  A steadily deepening frown on Gretchen's face suddenly cleared and she indicated the casing. "Iron."

  Soumake nodded. "Iron. Steel. Guns. Ammunition. Armored vehicles. Petro-chemical products. Fuel cells. Advanced atmospheric aircraft. Methanol-engine cargo trucks. Computer networks built from rare metals, or with processing cores which can only be fabricated in zero-g. Before our arrival, the local armies were armed with bows and arrows, spears tipped with metal scavenged from the ruins of the ancients, quilted armor, precious swords made of stainless steel handed down through a hundred generations… Does this sound familiar?"

  Anderssen felt cold and sat down, crossing her arms. The Mixtec regarded her steadily.

  "Now we are the Japanese merchants," he said softly. "Making landfall on a strange and fabulous shore. Finding an ancient, wealthy civilization lacking iron. Not the knowledge of iron as it was with the Toltecs, no…but the mines are played out, or so far distant from Parus as to be on the lesser moon. They remember the old civilization, these descendants of ancient kings. There are still books, drawings, carvings, oral traditions of a Golden Age when the Jehanan ruled the sky, the waves and the land. They are very, very eager to regain the tools which made them masters of the world.

  "I will tell you, the factors from Kiruna paid a heavy price for the right to sell scrap metal on this world. But they are making a handsome profit, unloading the detritus of a hundred years of war in the Inner Worlds. Bargeloads of recycled aluminum from Svartheim and Korgul and New Stockholm arrive every week. And the Fleet won't be interrupting that traffic, oh no."

  "But wait…what do they have to trade? Not gold, surely."

  Soumake's serious expression remained, but there was a twinkle in his eyes. "Did the Japanese who fled the Mongol invasion of holy Nippon want gold from the Toltecs? No, they needed food, clothing, slaves to clear the deep forests of Chemakum and Chehalis. So they traded what they had – horses, double-season rice, geared milling machinery, metalsmithing – for what they did not.

  "And here, on Jagan, aside from pretty artifacts by the ton, there are certain plants which only grow in the Arachosian highlands, or in certain valleys around Takshila and Gandaris. The bitter Nem is a mild psychotropic for the local people, but once the labs on Angehuac have processed the seeds and the milky white sap, well…it becomes much more. Very popular, or so I understand."

  "How much profit can there be in biochemicals?" Disbelief was plain in Gretchen's voice.

  Soumake snapped his fingers. "Enough, considering they're trading something worth less than a ming here for something with a six hundred percent rate of return by volume on AnГЎhuac. And there are other sources of revenue…glorious textiles, rugs, fine porcelains and ceramics, excellent liquors, certain unique woods. Many, many luxury items in demand in the core worlds because they are new.

  "But all of this involves you only peripherally: I will not grant you a permit for survey in the land of the Five Rivers."

  "I see." Gretchen thought she did understand and was oddly touched. "You think it's too dangerous for me to be wandering over hill and dale. You think the local princes have accumulated enough firepower to see about settling all their old scores. Is that why the Fleet has arrived?"

  Soumake rose from his chair abruptly, face clouded. "I wish every Imperial citizen on Jagan were aboard a Fleet lighter and bound for Tadmor Station today. I suggest…you find an out-of-the-way place to stay, Anderssen-tzin. And remain there and not go out until the next liner comes through. Good day."

  Gretchen returned his polite bow, retrieved her papers and made a quick exit. Walking into the cool dry air of the hallway was a welcome shock, wiping away a gathering sense of foreboding. For a moment, though, she turned and looked back at the closed door. He must be truly worried, she mused. I've never seen such a talkative Imperial official before.

  The heart of the Consulate was a staircase of native stone dropping two stories from the main business floor to an entry foyer large enough to hold a zenball field. Gretchen was making her way down the steps, distracted by the carved reliefs lining the balustrade, when she nearly ran into a tall woman coming up the steps with a quick, assured walk.

  "Pardon," Anderssen said, coming to an abrupt halt before they collided. The woman looked up, fixed her with a cornflower blue gaze and a brilliant smile lit her face.

  "My dear! Terribly sorry – I haven't been paying attention all day! You must be freshly arrived? Come about some official business? Of course, no other reason to be in this drafty old place, is there?"

  Gretchen found herself turned about and escorted briskly up the stairs and into a sitting room filled with overstuffed chairs.

  "Let me look at you. Yes…" The woman's good humor did not abate and the brilliant azure eyes turned sharp, considering Gretchen from head to toe. "Dear, have you found someplace nice to stay? Your current residence just will not do, not for a woman of repute like yourself. There are some beautiful little hotels near the Court of Yellow Flagstones. You will like the White Lily best if I am not mistaken, and I rarely am. Ask any of the taxi drivers, they'll know the way. Yes, very nice, with breakfast – human breakfast – and real beds and, dare I say? Proper bathtubs with hot water. Oh yes."

  Anderssen felt a little shocked, as if a bison had crashed out of the nearpine and run right over her, but she mustered herself and managed to squeak out: "Doctor Gretchen Anderssen, University of New Aberdeen, very-pleased-to-meet-you."

  "A doctor?" The woman's smile changed, dimming in one way, but filling with warmth as her public persona slipped aside. Gretchen relaxed minutely. "Well done, my girl. Very politely done – reminding me to introduce myself as well." A strong hand – surprisingly callused, given the exceptionally elegant gray-and-black suit the lady was wearing – clasped Anderssen's. "I am Greta Petrel. No, don't laugh, my hair just comes this way, not an affectation at all. All the Army wives don't believe me, of course, but I think you might. Yes, I
think you do."

  Gretchen managed to tear her attention away from chasing the crisp flood of words coming out of the woman's mouth and saw that Mrs. Petrel's hair was raven black with two white streaks, one falling from either temple. The woman dimpled, one finger brushing across small sapphire pins in her ears and flicking away from the snow-white hair.

  "Fabulously jealous, all of them. But what can they say? Nothing but nice things to my face, oh yes. Now, behind my back…well, I really could not care less about their twittering. Now, dear, tell me how you've fared today in my so-grand house. Did you get good service from whomever you saw? Did they serve you tea? Doctor of what, exactly?"

  "Xeno…xenoarchaeology, ma'am." Gretchen was suddenly sure the woman wasn't exaggerating when she said my house. She could only be the Imperial Legate's wife. "I'd come to see the attachй of Antiquities about a permit…"

  "Ah, Soumake is a dear, isn't he? Such a serious young man, though. I'm sure he told you no quite firmly, even with such beautiful golden hair and sweet features. No matter, he's terribly married and you've children of your own to see after – no sense in gallivanting around after a career officer like him, oh no. Well, he was right to send you on your way, though I'm sure you're just disheartened by the whole sordid business."

  Mrs. Petrel shook her head and Gretchen felt suddenly chastised, as if she'd forgotten her sums in front of the entire class. She also felt dizzy. Trying to keep up with the older woman's turn of conversation was wearing her out.

  "There is only one sure cure for such things, my dear." Mrs. Petrel tucked a stray tendril of Gretchen's hair back into place and pressed a handwritten card – shimmering green ink on creamy realpaper – into her hand. "I'm having the smallest gathering possible at the summer house in a few days. You come and sit with me and we'll have a bite to eat and some tea. Perhaps I can see if Professor SГє can find a scrap of decency in his black, black heart and let you work under his permit. But no promises!"