by Sulivan, Tricia; Nevill, Adam; Tchaikovsky, Adrian; McDougall, Sophia; Tidhar, Lavie
“You’re telling me that this primitive rock, which has spent most of its travels in empty space, just happened to wander through the Ostermann zone during one of the most famous battles in Hegemony history?”
She beamed at him as a teacher might at a bright pupil. “That is correct.” The elevator opened. “Come and see our sheep.”
They stepped out of the lift onto what could have been the surface of a temperate planet. The effect was so startling that it wiped Danny’s next thought from his head. The fields he’d thought to be flat from above in fact rolled like a natural landscape, replete with hills and streams. A zephyr riffled the grass, and the light that had all but blinded him above bathed the scene with a radiance that was, this far down, rather pleasant.
And then there were the sheep. Danny was familiar with such animals, of course. They were among the standard livestock that humans had exported from Earth, although their genetic make-up had usually been altered to suit whatever environment they were imported into, leading to substantial variations between the specimens he had encountered. While the animals grazing here were comparatively modest beasts, there was something quintessentially sheepish about them. There was little doubt that these animals came from old stock. And old stock was a very valuable commodity.
“They’re all white?” Danny said. “That’s traditional, I believe.”
“We spin and dye our wool by hand.” One of the animals had meandered towards them and Bell buried her hand in its fleece. “That’s the way it has been done since our order was founded. We see no reason to change. And besides, we now believe that God prefers his creatures… unaltered.”
She met the sheep’s gaze instead of Danny’s, underlining with obvious regret the close kinship between her and the animal. If her ancestors had once thought that the intention of their holy scripture was to be more like their sacred animals, it seemed that in more recent times the tide of interpretation had flowed back the other way again. This was pretty tragic. It was going to make fantastic melodrama.
“So that’s why you never settled?” he said. “Because the promised land was promised to humans, not to… whatever you believe you have become?”
Now she did look at him. “One of the reasons, perhaps.” Instead of elaborating, however, she turned abruptly and strode back towards the elevators.
“Where are you going now?” When Bell ignored him, he readdressed the question to Floss. “Where’s she going?”
The older crew member simpered. “We do not question the Bell’s whim.” She lifted the hem of her robe so that she could hurry after her leader. “We only follow.”
What the hell? Left alone, Danny vented his frustration to Hope as he watched the women disappear behind the elevator shaft.
She’s still waiting for your story, McGrory. Hope had resumed her chatty persona. You’ve gotta tell them something. C’mon it’ll just be like confessional with Father O’Reilly.
The reference, as usual, was lost on him.
What’s got into you, Hope? he said. Whose side are you on? Can’t you see the opportunity we’ve got here?
Yes, I can. Hope’s voice was suddenly serious. I really can. And I really want you to take it.
Her tone mystified him, but she was right about one thing: he was losing them. He could feel their cooperation evaporating. Danny hurried to catch up with his hosts. Behind the elevator he found a staircase, where the carpet resumed. He followed the engrossing design from tread to tread. At the top, the pattern resolved into a second image; this time depicting tall, twisting crystalline spires. No one in planet-hunting circles in the Hegemony could have failed to recognise it.
Cowrie’s World, Hope supplied unnecessarily.
Wrenching himself away from the beautiful rendition of that planet, he found Bell and Floss in conversation with the tenders of some raised vegetable beds.
“Well.” He beamed. “This is very impressive.”
The women paused in their conversation and blinked at him. Once again their unwavering expectation rattled his confidence. This time, however, he threw off the doubt, rallied his determination not to miss out on his prize. That was until he spotted yet another picture in the carpet at the women’s feet. He dropped to his knees to examine the circle of suns. “The Kori-kori Configuration,” he whispered. When he looked up, the women had moved off again. He managed only a few steps of pursuit before the pattern gave up another familiar wonder. Wilson’s Duality, in all of its vapour-bound glory. His hosts had begun to ascend to the next level.
“Wait,” he called.
Between the leafy beds and the stairs he stumbled over the Awakening Of The Mechanitrona, the Butterflies Of Dhelve, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, the War Of The Three Worlds. All of these were key events in galactic history, household names. But, again, each of the scenes was subtly different from its clichéd Hegemony representation. And that was just the ones he recognized. He followed the pattern as it raced and resolved into image after image, and discovered that the really startling thing was that the unfamiliar scenes outnumbered the familiar ones by an order of magnitude.
If Bell could be believed, the carpet wasn’t just a work of exceptional artisanship, it was a comprehensive historical record of the significant places and events of the last few thousand years. But that really was impossible. The galaxy was too large, their ship too slow and ancient.
On the next level, a cohort of crew was tackling various processes involved in turning fleece into fibres. Bell stopped to pass a word and a smile with them before walking on again.
“Wait,” Danny shouted again, and when that had no effect. “My story…”
This time she deigned to wait for him. “We would love to hear it,” she said. Her gaze drilled into him.
“Well…” Danny was out of breath and had a pain in his side from the chase. He swept an arm in a semi-circle, indicating the carpet on which even now he was spotting scene after amazing scene. “But first… it was a lie, wasn’t it? Or a joke, a joke at least? When you said that your ship was at Harmony’s Shelf, and that was how its image got into your extraordinary carpet.” Neither woman responded. “Because if it’s true, and all of the other images are true, were woven from actual experience… well it’s not possible, is it?” Neither woman offered even an ounce of refutation, and so he was forced to complete the chain of thought himself. “Because, no one gets that damned lucky!”
Bell looked crestfallen. “It was neither a lie nor a joke,” she said. “Every image you see in our carpet was, exactly as you say, woven because the Saint Rachel happened to be at each place at the right time. It is not coincidence, Mr Gibbs. Nor is it luck. It is the Bellwether’s gift. We call it divine guidance. If you prefer a secular explanation, you might call it instinct, perhaps something we inherited from our ovine cousins. And that is the other reason that our ship never settled. We are a wandering flock now. It is our role to cross the endless spans of the cosmos and witness as many of God’s great works as we can. We trust Saint Rachel to guide us, and she always does so. We have seen such wonders.”
Danny still found it impossible to believe her. And yet, if what these women said was true, this carpet was potentially a map to a thousand wonders unknown to the Hegemony. The Saint Rachel’s story itself would be a flash in the pan, and even a broker’s fee on the sheep’s genetic property rights would be of little consequence compared to the riches awaiting him via the combination of these images and the ship’s log.
He had to have this carpet. More than ever now, he needed to get these women on his side.
“Thank you, for humouring my curiosity,” he said at last, a combination of avarice and excitement quashing the last of the nerves. “And for that I owe you my own tale.” He sighed, and inflected his voice with an appropriate degree of weary fragility. “You must forgive my reticence. Once you’ve heard what I have to say, I think you’ll understand how difficult it is for me to relate. I was born into a military family on a tiny world of so little sign
ificance that I won’t trouble you with its name. Our family was not a high-ranking one, but our people were involved in a long war and it was expected that we would do our duty, so I enlisted in the orbital patrols.”
Danny had closed his eyes to convey how emotional this all was for him. When he opened them, Bell had wandered away again. The woman called Floss smiled encouragingly, however. “Go on,” she said.
“Well, I…”
“Continue, we’re listening.”
Edging after Bell, who had now reached the base of the next flight of stairs, Danny went on. “It wasn’t just I who enlisted. My brothers and sisters all joined the same unit, and we forged a crack force whose reputation soon spread beyond our little planet.”
“Oh dear.” Floss’s face crumpled, then she turned and followed her leader up the stairs.
“Wait,” Danny protested. “I’m telling you the story.”
“Well, yes,” Floss slogged up the carpeted steps. “But we were hoping for the other one.”
“What other one?”
“The one about you and Hope To Die.” The hem of the woman’s woollen robe danced in front of him. “That one seemed quite funny. There was lots of running away.”
“How do you know about that?” Of course the answer to that question at least was obvious. And Hope’s subsequent silence as much as declared her guilt.
Floss’s answer drifted down to him. “Hope To Die told it to the rest of the sisters. It sounds very exciting, although apparently you can be a bit of a scallywag at times. I do hope you get your just desserts at the end.”
What exactly have you been telling them? Danny whispered to Hope, but his ship chose not to reply.
At the top of the stairs, Danny followed Floss over to a corner where Bell was attending an industrious group of crew members. When he joined them he realized with horror that they were ripping the carpet up. They used tools to unpick the weave and main strength to yank the threads free. He arrived in time to see a picture being pulled apart. A beautiful, emerald green world whose images he would now never be able to sell to the Hegemony.
“What are you doing?”
“We only have a finite amount of floor, Mister Gibbs,” Bell said. “When new events occur, we have to make room for new pictures.”
“But it’s priceless.” The pile of threads was growing, as was the exposed section of blank decking.
Bell shrugged. “It’s just a record. The experience for the crew members who visited that place was priceless.” As she spoke, a further influx of crew members arrived and doubled the level of industry. Boxes were opened revealing skeins of bright wool. A complicated apparatus was also erected. It was only when they started applying the yarn to it that Danny recognised it as a loom. The third item that was brought to the scene was an ancient viewing screen.
“Thank you for your visit, Mister Gibbs,” Bell said. At her feet the crew had worked fast to create a perfect blank square fringed with threads. “Your ship’s energy has been replenished. You’re no doubt eager to be on your way.”
“Wait, no. I wanted to do a deal. I can make you rich.”
The soft snuffling sound that Bell produced sounded quite unlike laughter, but her bared yellow teeth did suggest that she found his last statement humorous. “You’ve seen how simply we live. What could you possibly offer us? Now we’d like you to leave because we have work to do.”
That was when the penny dropped. The realization of it flushed through Danny in a hot rush. “Something’s going to happen, isn’t it? That’s why you’re out here. Your instinct led you here.” Immediately after the realization came the full blown panic. “Please. I want to see it. I need to see it. To be a witness—like you.” On the C-link he muttered. Hope, get on this. Record everything. “Please, this is vital…” Hope?
The ship still didn’t answer, and Bell turned her back on him, saying only: “Goodbye, Mister Gibbs.”
The crew members that bore down on him were stronger than they looked. They crowded him, buffeted him, drove him away from the scene. The last thing he saw as they herded him into the elevator car was the screen flickering to life, displaying a swathe of dark, pregnant space.
“What about my story?” he yelled in desperation.
This time, the snuffling laughter came from the sisters who crowded the rising elevator car with him. When they reached the docking level they wasted no time in bullying him back aboard Hope To Die.
Danny felt the mechanisms of disengagement beginning but he remained sprawled on the floor, attempting simultaneously to master his fury and regain his dignity, all the while ignoring the pain in his temple caused by the impact of the shiny boots which had been tossed after him.
“Thanks for your help there,” he muttered to Hope as he heaved himself into his chair. “Now perhaps if you wouldn’t mind, can we fire a beacon into that forsaken relic? There’s no way I’m giving that carpet up.” Silently, the command bubble displayed a three-sixty view of the space around them. The ancient rock was already drifting to a respectable distance, but from his own ship there was no other sign of activity. “Hope, don’t piss me about. I’m telling you to tag that ship.”
The new voice was flat and devoid of character. “I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.”
“Oh, don’t start on me now with that stupid Earthwave shit. I’m seriously not in the mood. In fact, forget the tag. Send in a crawler colony laden with nerve toxin.”
“I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself.”
“I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that either.” Then in her normal voice she said, “I am sorry, Danny, I’m not playing along any more. The story’s over.”
When Danny finally understood, he felt both sickened and thrilled.
“Who did you call?” he whispered.
“Does it matter?”
He’d never seriously considered that he might one day actually be caught, but the knowledge that—according to the sisters at least—his demise was going to be an event of galactic significance almost made it worthwhile.
He checked the view. For a while there was just the Saint Rachel; then, just as a wave of doubt began to lap at his certainty, the first Hegemony ship spun into view. Danny swung in his chair and began to laugh. He could imagine it now, the sector crowded with ships: the forces of law and security and corporate malfeasance from a host of systems, a clutch of independent bounty hunters too. He was on a lot of lists. He wondered how many there would be in the end. The Thousand Ship Capture Of The Outlaw Daniel Gibbs had a nice ring to it. As dramas went, his story would be prime time for sure.
Danny waited, laughing with excitement.
In the end, one ship was all that was required. Hope allowed them access without fuss or comment and when Danny left her, meekly and hardly noticed by anyone, he wasn’t laughing any more. It wasn’t a particularly satisfying ending, she admitted, but at least it was an ending.
Hope was not entirely happy either with her own part in bringing events about. It wasn’t at all like being a character in a movie. There were repercussions. Guilt, she discovered, was not an especially pleasant feeling.
In future she would be quite content in the role of observer.
When the Hegemony security ship had gone, she observed that the Saint Rachel Of The Further Fields remained. She watched the gen-ship for a time. It just sat there, waiting patiently. They were good at patience, she noted, and they had seen so much.
Hope decided to wait with them out there beyond the galactic fringe. Yes, she’d had enough involvement; it was time to try patience. In time, she had the feeling she would be rewarded.
Later. Something winked in the deep darkness. Something bright blossomed.
Something amazing happened.
Follow this link to read the author notes
The Bleeding Man
Aliette de Bodard
When Uncle Jarun brought the bleeding man back to Mother’s fortress, Sarisha was in the s
tables, watching. She’d learnt to make herself scarce in the last few years – so that she’d see the things Mother thought her too young for.
The bleeding man was tall and lean, perhaps young, perhaps old – it was hard to tell under the blood covering his face. He breathed slowly, with a sound like a rattle of wood; but he didn’t flinch as the guards dragged him off the horse and onto the stones of the courtyard. He didn’t make any other noise; just that breathing that always seemed on the verge of faltering – a sound that twisted within Sarisha’s chest until her own heartbeat seemed alien to her.
Uncle Jarun stood to the side of the bleeding man, his face expressionless. “Put him in the interrogation room,” he said. “I expect Chandni will be along shortly to blood-read him.”
After the Pahate guards were gone, Uncle Jarun remained where he was. His face turned left and right, as if smelling the wind. “Sarisha,” he said. “I know you’re here.”
He always knew. “It’s not fair!” Sarisha protested, as she stepped out of the stables.
“I know you, little fish,” Uncle Jarun said. “You’re always too curious.”
“I’m not,” she said, annoyed at being called by her child’s name. “You’re the ones hiding things.”
He stared at her – his gaze, as usual, revealed nothing. She wished she could be like him or Mother, and not have her feelings transparent. “You’re twelve,” he said.
“Mother was younger than that when they trained her.”
Uncle Jarun’s face shifted slightly – Sarisha wasn’t sure if he was angry. Every time she raised the subject, there was always the fear Uncle Jarun would show her again that bleak, inhuman fury that had gripped him when she’d first asked him why she wasn’t a blood-empath like him or Mother. “Your mother,” Uncle Jarun said, “does not want you to share blood with us. That’s the end of it.”
