They were well down another corridor when she realized there hadn’t been any music to accompany the organized movement. Whether it was a ballet, a play, or a mass, she would have expected some sort of music.
Now that she thought of it, there was no music anywhere. At least, she thought there wasn’t. Some of the chittering clicks and ticks that made up the background murmur of the chiptaur city could have been local opera for all she could tell. What were definitely missing were musical instruments.
There were niches or hollows lining the walls of some of the broader corridors and carved into the bases of many of the root columns. These appeared to be shops offering wares she could only glimpse in passing. Apparent fruits or vegetables, baskets of every description, a wood carver, and what might have been a physician.
She wasn’t sure, but Corsi thought she remembered Abramowitz once explaining that an active economy in nonessentials and decorative arts indicated something significant about a culture’s development. Of course, she couldn’t remember exactly what that significant thing was.
What she could do, with a tactician’s eye, was evaluate the technology around her.
No metal, of that she was sure. Cutting and carving tools appeared to be made of volcanic glass, similar to obsidian but in a variety of colors. She saw levers, pulleys, and inclined planes in use everywhere, but evidently the chiptaurs hadn’t thought to attach their pulleys to the bottom of a platform to make wheels. Every burden she saw was carried; no carts or even sleds were in evidence.
Nor were any weapons. She couldn’t be sure if it was planetwide or just the rules of this particular community, but there was nothing remotely resembling a spear, club, or bow anywhere to be seen. There were edge tools in abundance, from wooden shovels to chisels and vegetable choppers apparently shaped from volcanic glass. But none were shaped and balanced as weapons.
Corsi began to suspect the assertive nonviolence practiced by her nurses reflected the cultural norm here. Wherever here was.
There were cultivated areas beyond the columns of roots bordering some of the amphitheaters. This didn’t seem right to Corsi, particularly since the spaces received less indirect sunlight than the clearings. Perhaps the pinkish-yellow growths were more akin to mushrooms than true plants.
Lining each mushroom garden were rows of simple lean-tos with pounded felt blankets draped over their open ends. Corsi’s companions led her to one of these and made several ambiguous gestures that communicated nothing, then stood by expectantly.
“Uh-huh,” Corsi said. “It’s a lovely lean-to. Are these the guest quarters?”
Evidently realizing she hadn’t understood what they’d meant to communicate, the chiptaurs repeated their pantomime, which seemed to involve several uncomfortable postures.
Looking past their performance, Corsi saw individual chiptaurs entering other lean-tos in the row, then emerging a few moments later. She laughed, the sudden sound startling her nurses.
“Got it,” she said. “Public toilets fertilize mushroom garden. Thanks for the thought. Not now, maybe later.”
At length the nurses decided she’d understood their message and declined the offer. Corsi waited with the head nurse while Lefty and Spot availed themselves of lean-tos, then followed them back toward the cliff face that bordered the other side of the clearing.
Corsi realized they were back in the first amphitheater. Orienting herself to the cliff, she headed back toward the tunnel from which they’d emerged hours before.
Her nurses headed her off and led her again toward the cliff. As they got closer she realized a stream of water ran along a stone trough at the base of the wall.
Several chiptaurs were kneeling on their front pair of legs as their back pair remained standing, dipping all four arms into the flow of water.
“Hand washing?” Corsi asked, pantomiming scrubbing.
Her nurses seemed to approve, mimicking her gestures.
“Hygiene is good,” Corsi agreed and knelt beside them to wash her own hands in the water.
It was hot.
She snatched back her hands, expecting them to be partially cooked by the brief contact with the boiling water.
Leaning back on her heels, Corsi looked up at the cliff face. Now that she was looking directly at it, she realized it was strangely uniform, rising at a constant slope.
“This is a volcanic cinder cone, isn’t it?”
The image was back. She was on the roof of a rain forest canopy, beneath a white sun and hazy sky. In the near distance was a ring of volcanoes, cinder cones as symmetrical as a child’s sand castles barely protruding above the giant trees. Smoke or steam rising…
The head nurse chittered at her, getting her up and moving toward a tunnel leading into the face of the cinder cone.
“If the only reason you guys patched me up was you needed a virgin to sacrifice to the volcano, I’m afraid we’re both going to be disappointed.”
Great. Trapped and alone on a strange planet and the first time I think of Fabe is when I make one of his lame jokes. Sentimental fool, that’s what I am.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, Corsi saw this tunnel was different from the others she’d seen. It was paneled, for one thing. Or wainscoted. Great broad planks laid horizontally covered the rough pumice walls to just above chiptaur height. Which was to say about even with Corsi’s elbows. For another, the walls slanted in, disappearing in the darkness above the glow baskets without ever coming together. This was a natural fissure, perhaps an ancient steam vent from the volcano’s early days, not a passageway the chiptaurs had carved by hand.
Corsi could sense a difference in her escorts as well. They seemed subdued, but excited as well. Their chirps and chitters took on a hushed quality, but their eyes were bright and active. Anticipation? Reverence? Something like that. Corsi couldn’t put her finger on it.
The temperature within the tunnel rose, to at least thirty-five degrees she estimated, feeling the sweat trickle down her back. A sharp, sulfurous tang watered her eyes and scratched at the back of her throat. From the deep breaths the chiptaurs were taking she guessed this was a good thing.
The tunnel abruptly opened into an irregular chamber, roughly thirty meters across, well lit by hundreds of glowing baskets. Corsi fought gagging against the stench of chemicals as she looked around. This was obviously something special to the chiptaurs and her collapsing in a spasming heap would probably spoil the moment.
Two streams, each staining the gray rocks around it with orange and red chemicals, poured from the walls, their flows caught in a series of troughs. The troughs in turn carried the water to a series of pools. Something about the interconnected waterways snagged a corner of Corsi’s mind, but it was gone before she could catch it. Vents in the floor of the chamber released pungent steam; she estimated the temperature to be somewhere above forty now. From the bubbling of the pools, she guessed there were also vents under the water.
Most of the pools had a chiptaur occupying a low couch of carved wood. Other chiptaurs moved about, apparently providing their seated relatives with food and water or just companionship.
Her guides presented Corsi to each of the reclining chiptaurs in turn. She repeated her self-identification and expression of joy at being there when she thought it was indicated, wondering if she was being at last introduced to royalty of some sort. For their part the seated chiptaurs repeated the two clicky-tick phrases she’d heard so often.
As part of each interview she was directed to regard the bubbling pool of water. Some contained dozens of what appeared to be glass spheres, similar to ancient fishing net floats, others had various numbers of what looked to Corsi like koi, only mottled copper and black instead of white and gold. One pool seemed to contain a pair of large tadpoles, with two sets of legs and arms in addition to their stubby tails.
Corsi parsed that there was some connection between the contents of the pool and the status or office of the chiptaur presiding over it. Or at least she thought
there was. With the complete lack of language it was hard to be sure.
They came at last to a pool with no one beside it. The attendant chiptaurs, smaller than any Corsi had yet seen but with the brown on brown color scheme she associated with females, were just finishing arranging pounded felt blankets over the couch and arranging shallow bowls of what looked like berries nearby.
Head Nurse turned to her and took both her hands into her upper pair. Sensing this was a solemn moment, Corsi dropped to one knee, drawing a sharp breath at her back’s protest, to bring herself at eye level with the chiptaur.
The nurse chiptaur spoke at some length. While there was nothing in the tones of her chitters, clicks, and ticks that corresponded to human speech, Corsi had the impression it was something along the lines of a benediction.
“Amen,” she said when the speech was finally over. “And same to you. Really.”
Apparently satisfied, the head nurse dropped Corsi’s hands and settled herself on the reclining couch the attendants had prepared. Corsi decided her earlier guess had been right. Head Nurse was a member of some sort of ruling class. Whether she ruled because of her size or had put on weight due to the extra calories being waited on entailed wasn’t clear.
Corsi’s two remaining nurse guides made it plain she was to leave with them. As she followed Lefty and Spot down the tunnel toward the outside world she wondered what having a personal nurse on the ruling council said about her status as a guest—or prisoner—of the chiptaurs.
Chapter
7
Pattie awoke to discover the dirt and piles of plants had been cleared from around her cage. Looking about she spied what she thought were the zookeeper’s legs extending beneath a counter that held a variety of small cages a half-dozen meters away.
She decided it was best not to startle someone who might be handling a dangerous animal and waited for him to finish whatever he was doing. When he stepped into view, Pattie rose to her hind legs to bring her eye level as close to his as possible. It took her a moment to decide it was indeed the same fellow she’d met the day before.
“Good morning,” she said.
A sibilant mutter responded from a pocket in the zookeeper’s trousers. The man tried to jump away from his own pants.
“Still have my combadge, I see,” Pattie said conversationally.
The zookeeper stopped dancing and swatting at his pocket. He stared at her wide-eyed, his mouth agape.
Humanoid dumbstruck amazement, Pattie observed. That one’s definitely universal.
“In my culture, when we discover we’ve mistaken a sentient being for an animal, common courtesy dictates we release her from captivity and return her belongings,” she said. “Do your people have a similar custom?”
The zookeeper pulled her combadge from his pocket and held it in the flat of his palm. Eyes fixed on Pattie, he stepped closer to the cage. For a moment she dared hope he was actually going to give it back and let her out of the cage, but he stopped a meter beyond her reach.
Why is it never the easy way?
“Who are you?” the zookeeper asked, bending toward her. “What is this thing?”
Not wearing the combadge, Pattie could hear both the zookeeper’s words and the translation. She was surprised by the liquid sibilance of the language. Given his gray skin and dark clothing, Pattie had expected her captor’s speech to sound like Cardassian. A silly bit of prejudice, she realized.
“My name is P8 Blue, though I’m known informally as Pattie,” she answered the literal question. “The device you took from me is my combadge.”
“How does it work?”
“As you can hear, it’s a translator,” Pattie said, keeping her tone pleasant. She wasn’t going to lie; lies were too hard to keep straight. But she wasn’t going to volunteer any information, either.
For a moment the zookeeper seemed to accept that noninformation as an answer.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Pretty far away,” Pattie said. “The vehicle I was traveling in sank in the bog. Were you the one who rescued me?”
“Yes,” the zookeeper seemed surprised to be asked a question. “My name is Solal. I am a [student animal husbandry authority].”
Pattie recognized the awkward phrasing of a term the universal translator couldn’t render exactly.
“Either you’ve lost some arms and legs,” Pattie said, diverting the conversation, “or you’re not from around here.”
In fact, Pattie had a pretty good idea where Solal was from. If she was right, the Prime Directive was in full effect; do or say nothing to indicate civilizations on other planets nor interfere with civilization on this one. Aided by the eight-extremitied physiology of the local fauna, she was going to play Zhatyra II native.
If possible, she was going to get her combadge and disappear into the forest until the da Vinci arrived. Failing that, she was going to focus on avoiding vivisection until Captain Gold rescued her.
And Commander Corsi.
“I come from beyond the sky,” Solal was saying.
“Really?” Pattie asked, packing the word with amazed interest. “Literally? Not metaphorically? Fascinating. Pull up a chair and tell me about it.”
Whatever Solal would have said died with the sound of a distant door opening and closing. Suddenly tense, he leaned close to the cage.
“Do not speak,” he hissed. “Animals that speak are killed.”
Pattie nodded, shocked.
Solal stood, then as quickly stooped again.
“What do you eat?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”
Student animal husbandry authority, Pattie thought. Keep the livestock healthy.
“Just distilled water,” she said aloud. “Local food doesn’t agree with me.”
Solal nodded and rose again. Wrapping Pattie’s combadge in a rag, he shoved it deep into the back of a drawer in a nearby cabinet just as another of his kind arrived.
Pattie held perfectly still, making no move that might attract the newcomer’s attention.
She guessed from his build that the new arrival was also male and, from the texture of his skin, older. His hair was a darker red than Solal’s, almost a brown, and he seemed to have about twenty percent more mass, most of it girth. Perhaps Solal was an adolescent.
The newcomer, folio of some sort in hand, seemed to be reviewing information it contained with Solal. If Solal was a student, the newcomer’s attitude indicated he was a teacher animal husbandry authority. Senior zookeeper at any rate. Apparently satisfied with whatever Solal had to report, the elder zookeeper then issued what sounded like a series of instructions or list of tasks.
He turned his back to Pattie, evidently pointing in the direction of something beyond the walls of the menagerie.
Taking advantage of his distraction, Pattie lowered herself to all eights, making no sudden moves that might attract his attention. Carefully, as silently as possible, she backed into the packing case shelter Solal had provided. Easing herself as far into its shadow as she could, she settled down to wait.
Animals that speak are killed.
Chapter
8
“Another week.” Fabian Stevens glared into the fire.
Bart Faulwell, seated across the table from his friend, shook his head sympathetically. The two had met for lunch at a tavern in a ski resort in Pludnt. Their table was comfortably near a massive fireplace, the exact mirror of its twin at the other end of the long room paneled in dark and highly figured woods.
A few thousand kilometers to the south hundreds of solar mirrors focused their light on the face of the southern polar ice floe, starting the water on its journey north to irrigate the temperate zone. Here, however, the snow-clad slopes of long extinct volcanoes provided the best skiing in the southern hemisphere.
It was dark outside, Stevens and Bart’s personal lunchtime coinciding with local dinner, and the tavern was filled with what Bart assumed were tourists. They had the festive air of people far f
rom home and responsibilities.
It was remarkable to him that on a world close to global famine, populated by a people who across a dozen regional cultures were emphatically uninterested in events beyond their horizons, tourism was a universal passion. He’d discussed it with Carol Abramowitz. The cultural specialist had explained global tourism was a recent phenomenon, something that had developed in the last two centuries.
When the Bundinalli had developed warp drive and discovered space around them was crowded with dozens of alien species and civilizations, their definitions of “local” and “familiar” had undergone a radical change. Now they routinely took vacations to places their great-grandparents hadn’t even imagined. But fundamental natures didn’t change that quickly. Tourism off-planet was essentially nonexistent. For all their newfound mobility, their destinations were still local.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of their meal. The local specialty was a game animal that tasted very much like lamb roasted with dried fruit put up in the traditional manner—dried in front of the very hearth they were enjoying now—from the previous summer’s growing season. They both had identical platters; local rules of symmetry did not allow different meals to be served at the same table, and the aroma was enticing.
Bart carved a forkful of meat and skewered a slice of fruit. Good. Every bit as good as the aroma. If he were stationed here another week he’d probably put on a kilo.
He said as much to Stevens.
“It’s good,” his friend said. “Almost in a league with rastentha soufflé.”
Bart snorted. Stevens had been singing the praises of the Brohtz specialty to anyone who would listen.
“Any luck finding someone willing to program it into the replicators?” he asked.
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