“Open to the environment,” she ordered.
The alien air rolled in as the armored glassine was cranked up; it was full of an unexpected freshness, like a garden under a dome, but wilder and sweeter and utterly free of the slight tang of dust that had been the backdrop of her life. It was as warm as equatorial high summer, and the dampness was almost uncomfortable. One would have to dress more lightly here; it would even be comfortable to go naked save for utility harness, as in a sealed environment.
“Our crops and domestic animals will probably require modification,” she said. “Of course, local material will also be useful.”
As they swung over the open ground a group of hexapodal creatures panicked at the flier’s shadow and thundered away; she blinked in surprise, her nicating membrane sliding over her eyes as she estimated their numbers.
“Greater than a million. This is an abundant biosphere,” she said. “Odd. I cannot even describe their social unit; we have not named them yet. Owkimi?”
That meant literally “a group of beasts characterized by six limbs.” Not particularly poetic, but accurate.
“This vista resembles some tales of the most ancient times, when the first sentients emerged to name the life they encountered for the first time. It is as if I now inhabit a literalized metaphor.”
“Yeah, owkimi is finicky enough for Demotic,” he said. “It all reminds me of reconstructions of the Great Plains back home. Though the buffalo didn’t have six legs and four eyes and spikes on the ends of their tails and slate gray skins with cream-colored stomachs.”
“Yes, we are definitely not dealing with an introduced flora and fauna,” she said thoughtfully. “Although the basic biochemistry suggests that there were indeed linkages, if at a more remote period. There will be surprises.”
“You say ‘surprises’ as if it that were a bad thing,” Jeremy chuckled . . . in English.
After a moment she nodded. In Demotic, a surprise was a bad thing unless you specified otherwise; the unexpected was usually negative and often lethal. There were advantages to knowing another language, in the way it gave you multiple perspectives and promoted self-questioning of your world-view. Not all of the surprises here would be bad, not on a world that teamed with life and did not die.
And now the Real World also has alternatives.
The savants said that it would be a very long time before pressure equalized on both sides of the gate—a planetary atmosphere was a most massive object. The effects on the Real World would be far greater than those on the new planet . . . which reminded her that they must establish a name for it.
New World? That would be appropriate, though it posed the difficulty of an infinite-regression series: Would you name the next accessible planet Newer New World, and then Still Newer New World?
“Hear the Tollamune will!” she said. “This planet shall be known as Vow’da!”
A pleased murmur went through the crew, and then a brief cry of “Tollamune!”
The name played off her mother’s Thoughtful Grace title—Vowin also derived from the root for “swift”—and the literal meaning was Moon-World, which was objectively appropriate.
Three more airships were lashed down to the ground by the campsite atop the bluffs, a little way from the rows of temporary shelters and lines of tethered rakza and Paiteng and the beginnings of permanent structures as machines burrowed and ate and transformed; the skeletal form of a temporary docking tower was already rising there, made from the huge trunks of the lowland trees. A few cargoes of those had already been floated through the gate; timber merchants from Dvor Il-Adazar to Zar-tu-Kan were going into quiet frenzies at the prospective accumulation of valuata.
“And this is not the only gate upon this planet,” she said meditatively.
“At least one other; I wonder where the hell that one goes? Wasn’t that a surprise. Maybe Earth didn’t get the best of it after all. Theirs just leads to the inside of a habitable sphere. Claustrophobic, if you ask me.”
“A very large sphere,” she pointed out.
“What’s a thousand billion times the surface area of Earth?” he said.
“A very large sphere,” she said.
“Well, yes, but it’s the principle of the thing.”
She thought about that for a moment and then squeezed his hand. “I believe your sense of humor will distort my mind, over time,” she said.
“Good,” he replied. A sly look. “I wonder what parareproductive coitus would be like upon this—”
“Vow’da.”
“Yes, Vow’da.”
“I do not think my added weight will discommode you even amidst vigorous intromission,” she said solemnly. “But we must make the experiment. A course of experiments, rather. The matter is worthy of serious and earnest study from all possible angles of approach.”
A signal lamp flashed from the ground as the Tollamune Rebirth came nearer and began to slant down through the air. Ground crew waited there, as did the contingent of the Sword of the Dynasty and the rest of the pioneers as well. Teyud read the message.
“Notaj sa-Soj . . . Commanding . . . Base One . . . I . . . express . . . obedience . . . to . . . the . . . Dynasty . . . and . . . note . . . that . . . the . . . hexapodal . . . animals . . . are . . . exceptionally . . . tasty . . . when . . . roasted . . . with . . . a . . . crust . . . of . . . narwak . . . several . . . are . . . in . . . preparation . . . suggest . . . you . . . dock . . . soon. Ah, Notaj maintains his pose of whimsical irreverence.”
“A man after my own heart,” Jeremy said.
Teyud turned toward him and smiled again, touching him lightly on the cheek.
“This echoes my sentiments, but I direct them toward you,” she said.
They kissed as the Tollamune Rebirth was drawn downward to the soil of the new world.
In the Courts of the Crimson Kings Page 33
