“Not yet.” Stevens shrugged. “Soloman said he’d look into it once the present mission was over, but…”
He let his voice trail off.
“What did Corsi say when you told her about the delay?” Bart asked.
“Nothing,” Stevens said, slicing a thick chunk of meat from his portion. “Just the automated response from the shuttle.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“Not really,” Stevens gestured with his laden fork. “Like Tev said, the Zhatyra observational array was due for its ten-year download when the war broke out. They’ve got one cloaked satellite they know is down and eleven more that need their recordings downloaded, memories purged, and other routine maintenance. Even with the extra week Dom and Pattie will probably still be at it when we get there.”
Bart said nothing. The additional week was only an estimate. They both knew that if the S.C.E. couldn’t get a handle on stabilizing the Bundinalli water system in that time they would be here even longer.
Reaching into his shoulder bag propped against the leg of the table, Bart pulled out a leather folio and placed it on the table.
“Here.”
Stevens looked at the folio, then at Bart. “What? Your letters to Anthony?”
“No. I replicated a folio for you,” Bart explained. “It’s just like the one I use for writing to Anthony. I figured you might like writing to Commander Corsi.”
“Writing to—I’ll be seeing her in a week or so.”
“I know that,” Bart said. “I also know that when I write letters to Anthony they don’t actually go anywhere until I see him again and can put them in his hand. But when I’m thinking about him, writing to him is the best way I know to feel as though he’s there with me.”
“Oh.” Stevens picked up the folio and hefted it. “Thanks. I’ll have to try that.”
Lacking a shoulder bag, he set the folio on the edge of the table at his elbow.
Bart reached into the bag again and drew out his own folio. Eyeing the location of Stevens’s, he placed his carefully on the edge of the table at his own elbow.
Catching his friend’s questioning look, he waved his hand, indicating their precisely symmetrical surroundings.
“Just in case,” he explained.
Chapter
9
The next day, instead of bringing her the usual survival rations and water, Spot and Lefty led Corsi through a number of tunnels, all of which looked familiar. At last they entered a large room, completely open along one wall. Corsi realized a wooden room so wide and deep could only be in the main trunk of the tree. She wondered how much of this carving out it could take.
There were several raised surfaces coming directly out of the floor, like truncated pillars that reminded Corsi of mesas rising out of the desert. As the number of chiptaurs lounging about them registered, she realized she’d been literally correct. The truncated pillars were tables.
“A restaurant?” she guessed.
Her two companions, evidently agreeing with whatever they thought she’d said, led the way to a table near the open wall. They were no more than a dozen meters from the ground, Corsi saw, overlooking a clearing she didn’t recognize.
“Lovely,” Corsi said, “And I’m starving. But without my tricorder, I’m not sure what foods of yours I can eat.”
This seemed to please Spot and Lefty. They settled in. Tucking their four legs beneath them, they each leaned their upper torso forward to rest the elbows of their lower arms on the table. They both indicated with their free hands that Corsi should also sit.
Corsi looked around the restaurant and saw they were being politely ignored by the other diners. The few whose eye she caught nodded politely before turning their attention back to their own tables.
More significantly, a row of chiptaurs was approaching from a different entrance, laden with bowls of food and wooden plates.
“You called ahead for reservations, didn’t you?” she asked Lefty.
The chiptaur chirped, making what Corsi was fairly sure was an encouraging gesture.
She sat, tailor fashion, ignoring the scream of protest from her left knee and thigh. The tabletop was a little too high for comfort and a bit too far away for convenience. However, with the table being a solid pillar, there was no way to slide any closer and the chiptaurs had evidently not developed booster-seat technology.
Come to think of it, how come I haven’t seen any children?
Her thought was interrupted by the arrival of the waitstaff with bowls of fruit and vegetables, some raw and some steaming, and cauldrons of soup and water. These they placed in the center of the table. Wooden platters, two sorts of wooden bowls, wooden utensils that looked remarkably like human forks and spoons, were set in front of each diner.
Glancing around, Corsi saw similar communal arrangements on the other tables. The chiptaurs were continuing their practice of behaving as though she were just like everyone else. Fair enough, provided their food didn’t kill her.
Bobbing politely, the servers withdrew.
For their part, her two companions continued to make their encouraging chirps and clicks, indicating various bowls as they did.
Hoping local microbes didn’t like humans, Corsi indicated she would like some water. Spot poured half a liter into the smaller of her two bowls, then poured some in her own and Lefty’s. It was cold, with the mineral tang of an artesian well.
Despite her thirst, Corsi was careful to sip. She couldn’t help trying to taste for microbes.
From that point she was committed. She tried a tiny sample from each bowl, waiting several moments between bites to check for adverse reactions. The fruit was so bitter the tiniest nip had made her scalp contract, but the steamed greens with what looked like walnuts were delicious.
Corsi was just deciding the flavor of starchy tubers was a constant throughout the galaxy, when a scuttle of brown movement at the edge of the table caught the corner of her eye. Scorpion!
She swung without thinking. But fast as her battle-trained reflexes were, Lefty was faster. The chiptaur’s heavy lower arm flashed across the table, taking the full force of Corsi’s backhand before it connected with its target.
For a heartbeat no one in the restaurant moved. Then Spot rose and came around the table with an empty platter and sprig of green from a salad and began trying to coax the intruder onto the plate.
Now that she had a chance to study it, Corsi was sure she would have swung even if she’d seen the creature clearly. About twelve centimeters long, the pseudoscorpion was heavily scaled and armed with a pair of lobsterlike claws. Otherwise its general layout was similar to her hosts’, with four legs for locomotion, the heavy pair of claws, and two smaller manipulative arms near its mandibles.
However, Lefty’s intervention and the care Spot was taking to rescue the creature told her swatting at the thing had been a bad choice. Hadn’t she just wondered where the chiptaur children were? For all she knew, this was a chiptaur toddler going through some sort of larval stage. Or it could be a pet. Or a deity, for all she knew.
From the surreptitious glances she could see their table was getting from the other diners, Corsi suspected she’d just undone a lot of the goodwill she’d spent so much time trying to build up.
Corsi watched as Spot traded the plate with the passenger for a clean one provided by a server, trying to make her concern apparent. She was sure it was the violence of her instinctive reaction, more than the potential harm to the animal, that had upset the chiptaurs.
She just hoped a show of remorse would repair some of the damage.
The rest of the meal passed without incident. By the time she and her companions rose, the other diners had regained their relaxed and convivial air. Though, as she returned the waves of several on the way out, Corsi realized chiptaurs had been coming and going. Most of those now eating may not have witnessed her moment of savagery.
They had not traveled far along the broad corridor before a commotion broke o
ut behind them. Or as close to a commotion as anything Corsi had seen among the chiptaurs. Several voices were raised above the general buzz of clicks and chitters, all of them apparently calling out similar phrases.
Spot and Lefty wheeled in place to face the way they’d come. Corsi turned as well, noting there was no interruption in the flow of traffic and general conversations around them. Her companions weren’t looking back because they were curious; the calls were directed at them.
A party of chiptaurs was approaching, as close to a mob as anything Corsi had seen, clearly excited and in a hurry. Even in their haste, however, they did not push past anyone. Most in the corridor saw them coming and moved out of the way. However, if a chiptaur seemed unaware of them, the group paused in its rush, speaking with what looked to be courtesy and waiting until the way was again clear.
How do these people get anything done?
At last they were upon her and her entourage, but rather than crowd around her as humans would have done, the mob compressed itself along one wall of the corridor. Though Corsi’s height and the curving ceiling kept her near the center of the corridor, the chiptaurs were doing their best to leave the right-of-way unobstructed.
There were four chiptaurs to the core group, Corsi deduced from the loose formation of the small crowd. But just as individuals had joined her tour of the town earlier, another dozen chiptaurs had apparently attached themselves to the central four as they passed. She still had no idea whether this was a show of support or curiosity.
The leader of the core group, a male whose reddish hair was almost copper in the light of the glow baskets, was holding something concealed in his clasped forehands.
Taking a small step forward from the others, he extended his clasped hands slightly and he chittered at Corsi.
“What is this?” asked a voice from his hands.
Corsi almost whooped.
“My combadge,” she answered, keeping her voice level as chitters and ticks emitted from the chiptaur’s hands. “It enables me to talk to others.”
Without ceremony the chiptaur opened his hands and extended the combadge to Corsi.
Trying not to snatch, but not giving him time to rethink the gesture, Corsi took her combadge from the chiptaur’s palm and affixed it to her uniform. Pretending to adjust its position, she pressed a contact, broadcasting a nonverbal signal. There was no response. Either there were no other Starfleet personnel in range, or something had happened to them. Neither thought triggered any memory.
“It was silent for many meals,” the leader observed, bringing her mind back to her surroundings.
Many meals? How long was I unconscious?
“The universal translator needed time to learn your language,” she explained.
The chiptaurs regarded her blankly for a moment. Given the level of their technology, she wondered if they thought she’d told them the combadge was a living thing.
“My name is Domenica Corsi,” she said, moving on. “How are you called?”
“We are the K’k’tict,” the copper-colored male answered. “My name is—”
The universal translator rendered a series of clicks and ticks Corsi couldn’t follow. The other three in his group apparently introduced themselves as well, oblivious to the UT’s inability to render K’k’tict proper names in a form she could track. She wondered how her name had sounded to them.
Corsi looked to Lefty and Spot, expecting them to tell her their names as well, but they remained silent. She deduced there was a social order at work and that they were not far enough up the ladder to take part in the conversation.
“I thank you for the return of my combadge,” Corsi tapped the badge and smiled her most diplomatic smile. “Will you be able to return any more of my tools?”
“No,” the lead K’k’tict replied simply. “We fear one or more of them may be instruments of harm.”
No arguing with that.
“I have no memory of how I came to be here,” she said, trying another tactic.
“You fell from the leaves,” one of the females flanking Copper answered. “Perhaps from the sky above.”
The image returned, clear and isolated, without context. The roof of the rain forest, the volcanic cones with streamers of steam, an objective…what? She was moving, reaching from branch to branch; a white sun with thin, high clouds overhead and a sense of great depth below. She tested a mossy branch, then trusted her full weight to it as she reached for the next. But the branch is an arm or a leg of some giant tree dweller. Like the sloths of Earth, it allowed moss to grow over its fur as protective camouflage. The creature twitched and twisted, trying to escape. She hurtled downward through branches toward darkness.
With a start Corsi came back to herself in the middle of the crowded corridor. She realized she’d missed the last thing Copper had said to her.
“I’m sorry?” she said. “I didn’t understand.”
Better than “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“We want to know,” Copper said patiently, “why are you killing the K’k’tict?”
Chapter
10
It was by Pattie’s estimation midday when Solal returned. He apparently took her earlier invitation to heart, pulling a chair from a nearby desk along with him. He had what was evidently his own lunch, biscuits with small slabs of a cheese-like substance, and a variety of local greenery in a bag.
“I’m trying to get you to eat,” he explained, the combadge in his breast pocket chorusing its translation.
Pattie nodded, understanding the cover story. If she couldn’t convince him to give her the combadge, she was going to have to teach him how to turn it off. If it started speaking Nasat when one of Solal’s supervisors was around…
She had remained in the packing crate all morning, venturing out only to retrieve the bowl of distilled water Solal had left on his way out to do whatever chores had been assigned.
Three others of his species had worked in the menagerie for brief periods or simply walked through, apparently on rounds of some sort. Two of the strangers had been clearly female, their body shapes confirming Pattie’s theory the invaders were mammals.
And they were invaders. Perhaps it was just her response to the knowledge they killed what they considered talking animals, but just as she knew Solal’s people were not native to Zhatyra II, she knew their purpose here was not good.
While hiding in her packing crate, Pattie had given some thought on how best to go about pumping Solal for information. She’d decided her initial tactic of friendly interest had been wise. That he classified her as an animal worked to her advantage in that he evidently did not regard her as a threat—which did not bode well for any “talking animals” his people had encountered—and that he seemed genuinely fond of all animals.
From what she had seen of the others, she thought her estimate of his youth was also valid. If their social hierarchy mirrored most humanoids’—and if their operation on Zhatyra II was far enough along for secondary support personnel to be on site—he might not be the brightest example of his species as well—though she didn’t want to make the mistake of counting too heavily on that.
“How do beings from beyond the sky come to be on the ground?” she asked, taking control of the conversation as quickly as possible.
“We come from Smau, a world like this one, only prettier,” Solal explained. “Not so green. We fly into the sky with sleds. We travel for many days and then glide down to land here, on New Smau.”
Electromagnetic rail sleds to launch their vehicles and gliders to land. Both fit her theory. Both also meant all of the Smau-folk on Zhatyra II had made a one-way journey.
Significant was Solal’s matter-of-fact presentation. He expected an “animal” native to this world to understand interplanetary travel, agree that a world “less green” than this would be preferable, and accept the idea its home was now “New Smau.” Absolutely no evidence of the concept of native rights, or even native people, entered into his re
asoning at all.
Chance may have placed her at the mercy of the kindest of the invading monsters, but he was a monster nonetheless.
She was interested in Smau technology, but could think of no way to inquire without revealing a higher level of understanding than a talking animal should have. Also questions about the Smau-folks’ purpose on “New Smau” might overemphasize their keeper/keepee relationship. She focused instead on playing the role of eager student—or inquisitive pet—and asked open-ended questions about Solal himself and his aspirations, topics near and dear to any young male’s heart.
Over the next half hour Pattie learned quite a bit about adolescent social life on Smau. Unremarkably, there was a great deal of competing with members of his own gender for the attentions of the other, but also involved struggling to attain what the universal translator rendered as “right of [responsibility/self-determination]” without which he would never attain honor. Solal’s winning that right through some series of achievements he clearly regarded as exceptional had enabled him to request emigrating to New Smau.
His personal hero was Sonandal, the leader of the expedition to New Smau.
Sonandal had been the first of the Smaunif—Pattie deduced that was what the Smau-folk called themselves—to land on New Smau even before the scientists had been sure the world could support life. Going first was the leader’s responsibility, Solal explained proudly. His honor depended on his taking his responsibility seriously.
Solal explained there was no higher moral principle than being responsible for your own actions. Pattie agreed it was a better ideal than many she’d heard.
Her Smaunif zookeeper was not surprised she did not instantly recognize that it was not just “better” but was in fact the only moral code of any worth. What separated people from animals was self-determination. With that came responsibility and through that, honor.
Interested in more useful information, Pattie didn’t dispute the issue. But once started young Solal seemed determined to make his point.
Honor Page 5
