Of a Note in a Cosmic Song; Part Three

by Nōnen Títi

  And for what? A piece of dry land in a massive ocean on a very windy planet, bigger than DJar? Even this continent was uncompromising. Yet here they were, hopes and dreams. Here she was with two young girls, looking at an uncertain future of probably working some field to get food; no luxuries, no warm and clean homes, no cities with historic buildings and art museums, no piko-processors, wave-units, spinners, electrovans, or ready-to-eat meals. All that, every single person here had given up for the unknown. The only ones who could be considered better off than on DJar were the users, and they were here without having had a choice.

  Torn between the serenity of the unspoiled land with its beautiful night sky and the desperation of a people without past or future, Daili fell asleep.

  At first light the teams went as they had the day before. Thankful that Sinti didn’t speak much, Daili went straight to the huge boulder. Not only did Sinti follow in silence, but she didn’t do much else either. Daili had taken her tool pack along, as well as the map and a plastipack, but Sinti didn’t once offer to help carry any of it. She made no attempt to even look at the vegetation until Daili handed her the pack and told her to draw it as well as she could. When the only sign of what could have been animals came near them – one of those clouds of hovering bubbles Kunag had described – Sinti ran away, as far as running was possible on this slow-motion land. Her excuse was that those were insects. She only liked furry animals.

  Daili bit her lip. Anytime, she’d take Laytji with her strong emotional outbursts or Hani with her stubborn determination over this total lack of anything.

  They returned to the lander to find the spirits low. The rim team had returned early after discovering that the metal stakes they had worked so hard to secure the previous day had vanished without a trace, leaving the rope on the ground. Remag’s hand didn’t look good at all, and Kalgar contemplated returning to SJilai early for his sake. Nobody spoke much, each aware that their future, their last chance, was looking very dismal indeed. Only after Kala promised that the hand was getting better, and Remag himself insisted that they wait another day, did Kalgar agree to give it one more try. Daili went to sleep wishing as hard as she could that something good would come their way.

  The next morning, Remag was a lot better and Kalim and Kalgar left, once again optimistic, and this time armed with long plastic poles to use as supports for the rope, having concluded that short of alien beings, the only possible explanation for the disappearance was that the metal had somehow disintegrated. Once again, Kalgar warned against touching anything unknown with bare skin.

  It took them three days to get to the rim, but the plastic poles worked fine and could be driven much deeper into the ground with a lot less effort. Why that was, none of them could explain.

  For three more days, Daili coped with the girl who showed neither initiative nor insight, until she slipped on a bit of slimy pink mush and fell in it. Apart from the pain the fall caused her, the mush stuck to her hands and clothes and the more she tried to wipe it, the more it spread, making it hard to get up. “Help me out here,” she ordered Sinti.

  “But it moves. There’s something in it.”

  That put an end to Daili’s patience. Once she’d managed to stand up, she walked back to the lander and talked to Kalgar. “I can’t work with her. I would have helped if there was only the slightest bit of motivation in her, but there’s nothing.”

  “Who in Bue’s name signed her up for this trip?” Kalgar asked, his voice loud enough for all to hear, Sinti included.

  “I was assuming you did, since she’s listed as a scientist.”

  Kalgar groaned.

  “Anyway, I’d rather work alone.”

  Kalgar promised to find her another partner, since going alone was not an option. Next he took Sinti outside, while Daili explained to Kalim what had happened, though she felt a bit guilty when she heard Kalgar’s angry voice and Sinti’s crying.

  Kalim concluded that Sinti had been right about the slime moving; it had some life form in it. He took the mushy clothes out of the lander so that whatever it was could survive.

  “I’m sorry I had you deal with it,” Daili told Kalgar later.

  “I have no problem with that; she deceived the lot of us. I just don’t understand how I could have been so stupid to miss it.”

  Daili shook her head; she didn’t either. Sinti and her comate would suffer more for Kalgar’s own anger at himself, but it was no longer her concern.

  The next day, Daili went up to the rim with the others. It was not easy, even with the rope there to hold onto, because of her heavy body and her fear of falling again. Getting back down when the light was already fading was even more difficult, but from up there she finally got a better idea of the land. That night they all shared their impressions.

  “Well, it’s stable enough. We’re not going to be swept away by volcanic eruptions or quakes – a mudslide, maybe. I know nothing about the seasonal changes or the amount of rainfall and wind, but there seem to be very regular wet times. I’m assuming those are year cycles – that is, Kun DJar years, of course, but I’d have to drill to get a good sample,” Daili reported.

  “The red colouring of the seawater is caused by a film of red plankton or something that floats near the surface, but deeper down it’s teaming with life; all small, all unknown to us, and many also red-coloured, as are the micro-organisms on the banks,” Jenet said. He also mentioned that the water was rich in oxygen, so he did expect to find plant life down there, and there was salt, albeit an insignificant amount.

  Remag and Kintji, the botanist, reported that the pink mush Daili had fallen in did not have life in it, but it was life; a colony of cells, all interconnected and carbon-based like the hovering bubbles, but that was as far as their knowledge went for now. There was no evidence yet of any symbiosis, no indication of whether it was plant or animal or something else altogether. The same went for all the different life forms they had found at the top, but it would take time to do more in-depth studies. Nothing seemed to be flying except that which hovered in those clouds right above the ground. They had found pods and sticks near a river, which Remag suspected gave them a fair chance of finding some larger animals, but there were no guarantees.

  Kalim said there was no evidence of regular tides from the sea. Of course, the moons were a lot smaller than Agjar, and he had no idea about the weather. “What we think are clouds from a distance are not always that. Not just the animal bubbles, but some of those deep black clouds literally sit on the ground. I’ve also seen green and blue ones, which, if dispersed, could cause the sky to appear a different colour, not due to refraction like the pink, but due to their content. The problem is that I can’t get any samples; every time I come near they move away. And then there’s that strange red fog hanging over the hills, which also eludes me. I can’t tell anything until I get a closer look.”

  He did get a closer look the next day when that fog came near the crater – too close. He’d walked toward it and was almost immediately stopped by an inability to see or breathe, and a deafening noise. Luckily, his partners had pulled him back.

  “It wasn’t normal fog. It was neither water vapour nor dust particles and it didn’t want me there.”

  Whatever it had been, the last night they drank to the planet; it was good enough to make a new start. They returned to SJilai hopeful. Daili never learned what Kalgar had done about Sinti; the girl stayed away from her.

  Work would get serious now. Daili left planning the location of the settlement up to Kalgar. She went to see the girls, relieved to be back, and exhausted. Both sat down on her mat with her while she told them what they’d found; that it was considered good enough to stay, but it would be very hard. Worried mostly for Hani, she cautioned them not to put their hopes up too high. “You have to be aware that it isn’t going to be easy. It may never be. This planet has nothing. When we arrive there will be mud, soil, a few life forms which could be harmful, and that’s it. You’ll sit on bare grou
nd; no luxuries, no anything.”

  “That’s okay, Mom. Then it will be really our planet.”

  Like a fledgling had to go through a period of dishevelled down mixed with feathers to come out a beautiful bird, so Laytji, now she had turned thirteen, seemed neither child nor mature. Hani, who was past the worst of it, kept a closed face, not showing what she might fear.

  “No greenery either,” Daili went on. “The sky is pink, as is the water and some of the plants, but there are no flowers.”

  “No flowers? So how do these insects survive?” Laytji asked.

  Daili repeated they were not insects; nothing was the way they were used to. They should forget about their DJar expectations; maybe they should invent new names for them, because ‘blobs’ and ‘thingies’ didn’t work very well.

  It wasn’t just the children. Even the adults based all their expectations on what they knew. After a very long sleep on a proper mat, Daili went to her desk to write her report, but was interrupted by Frantag. Having received word that they’d settle, he wanted to make sure that the new society was well planned and had presented his instructions, in writing, to all administrations. This included Learners for which, in his own words, he’d been “attacked” by Jema.

  Daili tried to avoid getting involved, but Frantag wasn’t ready to give it a rest until she promised to talk to Jema. She called the home and left a message. Before she could get any more of her report written, two other people came to her with complaints about Frantag’s plan.

  Wilam was one of them, because the farmers had been ordered to hand over more plants to the scientists. Frantag had warned them that the land had not been found suitable for farming the DJar way, so they had to take precautions. The whole colony depended on it. “Why, then, are we here?” Wilam asked.

  Daili couldn’t answer that and told him to take it up with Kalgar.

  The other one who spoke her grievances was Tini. She, too, had been told that the Kun DJar landscape was full of dangers and Frantag wanted the settlement to be small and compact so the children could be kept within its boundaries. Tini had worked on her design for the last four years and wasn’t willing to give it up. “He never once showed any interest in our plans,” she said.

  Daili explained that Frantag was just worried about people’s safety. He had been given the reports from the surface, and it looked pretty hopeless. He’d overreacted a bit. He’d come around once he was down there. She convinced Tini to just wait without making any changes for now.

  Jema walked in later.

  “You went to Frantag?” Daili asked.

  “Yes, he wants to change Learners back to what it was on DJar. He never even bothered to come and talk about it. All we got was a written message about rules and regulations, which puts him back in charge. He doesn’t care if the kids are happy. I told him it wasn’t fair, so he threatened me that I’d be out of a job.”

  Jema sat on the edge of her seat. As she did when taken by a subject, her hands spoke as much as her mouth did. “Can’t you talk some sense into him, Daili? He won’t listen to me. I’m only a worker, convenient as a baby-sitter while on SJilai. How can we start a new colony if we take our mistakes along? He just doesn’t care.”

  Daili told Jema what she had Tini; that Frantag just needed to feel organized. Instead of confronting him, Jema should leave it alone for now. Learners on Kun DJar was still stations away. “Nobody here wants to do anything to hurt our new society, especially Frantag, keep that in mind.”

  “But he’s demanding an apology.”

  Daili couldn’t blame Frantag for that, even if only half of what he’d quoted Jema as saying was true.

  “So go tell him sorry for what you said. Just keep doing in Learners what you have so far. Frantag needs time, that’s all.”

  Jema promised she’d try that. She’d not wanted to bother Daili with this, but since Daili had asked… “I’m glad you’re back anyway,” she said.

  “So am I, Jema.”

  Poor Communication

  How did you say sorry if you didn’t feel sorry without turning into a hypocrite? Saying sorry wasn’t even an option for Jema. She’d try to talk; calm this time, better prepared. Had she been calm the first time she would have been able to control what came out of her mouth. Had she been calm, she’d have listened to Kiren and let Wilam handle it. Trying to ignore the kick mark that was still on Frantag’s door, Jema knocked on it.

  “Enter.” He was sitting at his desk. “If you have come to apologize you can come in,” he said.

  It threw her off guard; how bigheaded. “I just don’t see why we have to invite the children to Learners with a threat. Can’t we at least start with trusting them?”

  He ignored her coming straight to the point. “We do trust them. We trust that they understand the rules and the consequences of deviation so we can prevent problems.”

  In a calm voice Jema responded that she disagreed; on SJilai the children had taken it upon themselves to correct the few that caused problems because they felt Learners was theirs. She didn’t flood him with words; too much at once wouldn’t work.

  He pushed his papers away and stressed that he didn’t want the children to run free; the parents needed to know they were safe.

  Jema recognized what Daili had told her; that he was mostly worried about the new place, and that he was also trying to be patient. She argued that belittling them only caused people to kick against the system.

  “Children do that anyway. They complain about Learners. They always have,” he said.

  “Exactly. Isn’t that a sign there’s something wrong? If you complain about your job, don’t you want to be heard? Don’t you want a say in things?” He frowned. Maybe she’d ranted on too much. “Look, I’m only trying to do what’s best for the children,” she said.

  “You think because you’ve been running Learners on a spacekabin for a short while that you can understand the system, but the rules of Learners have been long established and they always worked well. There’s no reason to change that on Kun DJar.”

  He was trying to be nice; she could see that he was just trying to explain, but what he was doing was what DJar had always done: wipe all arguments off the table by saying it had always been that way. She couldn’t afford to get angry again. “Look, all I want is some respect for the children as people.”

  “They’ll have to earn that. Respectful children follow the rules and do what their parents and teachers say,” he said.

  He had stood up and leaned both his hands on the desk, not angry, just emphasizing, but he was emphasizing a maker mentality.

  “That may be what respect means to you, but that’s not how I see it, nor do a lot of other people,” she tried again.

  “Nonsense; everybody has learned what respect means, as you must have in Learners.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t swallow it for the truth. What they wanted on DJar was to create obedient little citizens who wouldn’t upset the system. They called it respect but it was fear of thinking for themselves.”

  He made an irritated gesture with his hand. “You can’t run a society without obedient citizens, as this conversation proves. It’s going to be hard enough already to mend the slack the children have been given during the last four years. All that Learners stood for has fallen to pieces on SJilai.”

  “If it was that easy to fall it wasn’t very well founded.” Damn it. She wouldn’t keep calm if he kept spitting out all that nonsense.

  Alerted by her lapse in control he repeated that if she was here to apologize to just get on with it, because he was busy and she would have no say in matters concerning Kun DJar anyway.

  “The only thing I want a say in is Learners.”

  “And you’ve had your say, more than, but I have years of experience and you have not.”

  Oh, Bue. Why was she even trying? Every cliché he’d ever heard would be used against her. “You have experience looking down from the top, but I have picked up the pieces of the system too
many times. I’m sure this is not the right way to go about it, but I’m tired of listening to arguments that rely on regulations when you’re dealing with people. You just can’t do that.”

  “I have more important things to do than waste my time on senseless discussions,” Frantag replied, motioning to the door. “Go control the children and leave the organization up to people who know what they’re doing.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, but you keep getting in the way.”

  He moved forward so fast that she automatically took a hold of the desk, but he was too maker-trained. Aware that she could provoke him to the limit, while he wouldn’t be able to do anything because of the rules that were part of him, she sat down on his desk, moving his papers with her hand.

  He turned bright red. “You will no longer have anything to do with Learners and if you don’t go now, I’ll find you a place on Habitat Three!” he threatened.

  That, of course, he could do. How humiliating would that be? She jumped down, called him a self-righteous maker and walked out the door. So much for a calm conversation. Before she’d taken two steps she literally ran into Kalgar, who was just heading for the office. He said sorry for the collision; she did not.

  Where to now? She’d need somebody to help Learners in case she’d blown it for all of them. Kiren would kick her if she told him. Worse, he would insist she’d go back to apologize and he’d come with her to make certain she did. He’d suggested that after last time. Jema had almost reached the habitat exit when she changed her mind; Daili would agree with her. Besides, she could say sorry to Daili.