On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted

by Helena Puumala

  “I think Maryse is right about the banality of evil,” Vorlund said. “Do you know anything about the War of the Nodes, Xoraya?”

  “Oh, I have studied it extensively, through historical records, of course. I’m not old enough to have been alive at the time, being a mere cub according to the counting on Xeon, although there are those at the Institute where I study, who were hatched before it happened.”

  “My understanding of the history of that time is that what was at its root was the desire of one Torrones Ghan to be seen to be the most powerful Ghan in the planet’s history,” Vorlund continued. “He simply wanted to be the biggest pecker-bird on the roost; the one whom all the other pecker-birds held in awe. The bird which could peck all the other birds with impunity, but whom none of the others dared to touch with their beaks. At least, that’s how the teacher from who I learned Node War history explained it. There was nothing grand about the Ghan’s ambitions, he said. What there was, was the desire to strut—yet look at how much damage that did, before it could be reined in.”

  “That’s the trouble—the reason why we have to do what we can to root out the idiocy that results in these evils,” sighed Maryse. “The petty, strutting pecker-birds can do a lot of damage. As can the lazy pleasure-seekers, when they can twist a world’s economy to serve their ends.”

  Xoraya spent some time watching the images of Kerris’ healing once Vorlund had downloaded the highlights of his work with the boy onto the console. He apologized for not giving her the whole record; the healing had taken hours, he said, and although an Xeonsaur might have been willing to spend the time to follow its every detail, right now she was caught up in human time with all that implied. She needed to write the speech she was planning to give, Maryse would have to plan the reception she was counting on, and Vorlund himself had made promises to conduct healing sessions which prominent government officials had requested.

  “Of course I’ll be lobbying for Maryse’s cause while I ease the aches of the various Senators,” he added with a crooked grin as he explained his scheduled activities.

  “Of course,” Mikal had agreed with a laugh. “Maryse is not one to let an opportunity slip by without at least an attempt to put it to use.”

  *****

  They ended the evening at a respectable hour. Maryse headed for her own suite down the hall, saying that she had a lot of work to do the next day. Vorlund left at the same time, to return to his rooms at the Presidential Residence where, he rather thought, Vascorn would want to have a talk with him before he could retire for the night.

  Mikal and Xoraya chatted for some time afterwards about the two nodal records that she had just seen for the first time but with which Mikal had been familiar for some time. Xoraya was surprisingly interested in Kati’s participation in each of them; Mikal couldn’t quite fathom from whence her interest sprang—unless she was simply encouraging him to chatter on about the woman he loved.

  “Having seen the nodal record of her time on Gorsh’s ship and the subsequent travels on the Drowned Planet, I can see how she was so quick to recognize Kerris as one of those she called Murra’s boys,” Xoraya said in relation to the record she had looked at first. “He was in bad shape when she first saw him, but those facial features are distinctive.”

  “Yeah, I agree with that, although I, too, am familiar with Murra, and Murra’s boys mainly through her nodal records. I did see Murra the morning we escaped the ship, but I was definitely not free of the mind-tangler then, so my node’s record of that time is pretty hazy and unreliable. Gorsh and his doctor had been floating me in the stuff, in hopes of breaking the mental blocks that kept me from spilling SFPO information to them.”

  “Kati was quick to jump to the boy’s defence; I gathered that she immediately decided that he had run away from slave owners, and didn’t for a moment believe the Morhinghy story about Kerris being their adopted son,” Xoraya continued. “She was reacting to body language, I presume?”

  Mikal was reminded of the fact that Xoraya belonged to a different species. The body language of the participants in the little drama in that record was obvious to him, but then, he was member of the vast, if varied, humanity. Xoraya, for all her learning about the human race, was not a member of it, even if, in appearance, she did not differ from humans any more than they varied among themselves. The cues that she would have learned to respond to would have been different ones from those a human reacted to—even a human plucked out of time and space, the way Kati had been.

  “Yes. She responded, first of all, to his cowering under the covers in the bed, which she correctly read as fear,” he told the Xeonsaur. “Then she responded to the Morhinghys’ arrogance; they certainly were not behaving like the loving, adoptive parents they were claiming to be. Of course, she had the advantage of having picked up Murra’s language on the slave ship. Thus, she knew what the conversation, short as it was, between the Exalted couple and the boy amounted to, while the Morhinghys assumed that no-one, in spite of their nodes, could pick up Kerris’ tongue in such a short time. The Vultairian Exalted don’t allow even the Ordinary Citizens of their world to have nodes, it seems. According to what Maryse has found out by talking to refugees from Vultaire, most of the inhabitants of Vultaire don’t even know that the difference between the mental dexterity that the Exalted display and their own is not genetic, but the result of an implantation which, according to Federation Law, should be available to all citizens.”

  “So Vultairians prefer their slaves not to have nodes,” Xoraya said. “Wouldn’t that mean that they’d have no interest in the elite bunch of captives that Kati was among, on the slave ship? Gorsh did have them all implanted with nodes.”

  Xoraya might have been hazy on human body language, but there was not a thing the matter with her logic.

  “You would think so,” Mikal responded, smiling at her. “However, Maryse thinks that the Vultairians with their bored persons’ interest in kinky sex would not be able to resist the temptation to buy up the teenage girls that were picked up from Kati’s home world about the same time that she was. They, as you may have noted when you viewed Kati’s first nodal record, were a rather exotic-looking pair: Ingrid, a tall, very light-skinned, and pale-haired young woman, and Roxanna, a beautiful, black-haired, brown-skinned girl, short but with a lovely figure.”

  “There are lots of stories among the humans of pale-skinned and pale-haired goddesses,” Xoraya mused. “Although the type has mostly disappeared from the area of space controlled by the Star Federation. The Lamanians come the closest, having the pale skin, but the large heads and the lack of hair rather ruin the symmetry. I should imagine that this is what Gorsh was thinking when he had his minions snatch that young woman. He could sell her as a descendant of the Goddesses.”

  “Some Vultairian brothel-keeper with more money than brains may have paid a Goddess’s ransom for her. And if he or she did, where did the money come from? The Oligarchs profit from their Klenser business, they trade the nodes that they claim for the planet’s population, but which are never implanted into Ordinary Citizens, but outside of that, we know of no legitimate business that they engage in, among the Space Lanes. Yet the Exalted never seem to be short of credit, here or anywhere else. How do they do it? If I knew the answer to that question, I think I’d be onto something very useful.”

  *****

  In the morning Xoraya asked Mikal if he thought it was okay for her to go and walk about the business district while he went off to help Maryse with the organizing of the Reception, which was to take place within a couple of days.

  Speed was of the essence when it came to the Reception, since the vote on the Official Investigation had been scheduled to take place by the week’s end. That things were happening quickly had Maryse and her staff elated; it looked like there would be no problem getting the Official Investigation to Vultaire underway in time to meet up with the Unofficial Team.

  “I need to think about my speech,” Xoraya said to Mikal. “I thi
nk best when I’m out—well, I know I won’t be outdoors here, but the business district is a reasonable facsimile—walking, and looking around me. Besides, this would serve a double purpose; I’d get to study human behaviour on the Federation Space Station. So, if you think that it’s safe for me to wander about, I would very much like to do so.”

  Her idea would definitely solve the problem of what to do with Xoraya while Mikal was busy “doing his job”. He had wondered whether Maryse wanted him to bring the Xeonsaur with him to her Station Headquarters, or to leave her in the Hostel. The second option had struck him as not optimal; there was not enough in the suite to keep a curious woman of massive intellect, amused. He had run through, in his mind, the people he knew on the Station, wondering which ones had the leisure—and the tact—to hang out with an Xeonsaur who was off her home world for the first time. But Xoraya had the ID Chip and she knew how to get hold of him or Maryse with it, and he could alert the Station Peace Officer Corps to keep a tracer on her while she was doing her thinking, and her research.

  “I think it can be done,” Mikal responded. “I’ll have to spend time at Maryse’s headquarters anyway, dealing with details of the Reception, and I’d just as soon not bore you with them. The customers in the business district are usually quite intent on whatever they’re up to, and it’s likely that nobody will take much notice of you, especially since we haven’t announced your arrival. However, it’s only good practise to keep your ID Chip tracer active—I’ll send a quick message to the Station Peace Officers to be alert for you in case you do run into some kind of trouble. And don’t hesitate to contact me if anything seems worrisome—I’m responsible for your safety, you do realize.”

  “Yeah.” She grinned; it was almost a human grin. “That’s why I’m checking with you, Papa.”

  That drew a chuckle out of him.

  “‘Everyone’s a comedian these days’,” he responded. “That comment is something Kati shot at me once, when she and I hardly knew one another.”

  “I like your Kati more and more as I learn about her,” Xoraya said. “I’m looking forward to meeting her in person, once we get to Vultaire.”

  “So am I,” Mikal muttered. “Oh yes, so am I.”

  *****

  Before leaving the suite, Mikal answered what questions Xoraya had about conducting herself while wandering about the Space station. He made sure that she knew how to contact him or Maryse, should anything, or anyone, compromise her safety. The woman he spoke to at the Station Peace Officer Headquarters agreed to set a tracer on Xoraya’s ID Chip immediately. Not that he was expecting trouble, he told her, but an Xeonsaur on the Star Federation Space Station absolutely had to be kept safe.

  “If something was to happen to her,” Mikal muttered to himself as he strolled towards Maryse’s makeshift Headquarters, “my money would be on the Vultairians being responsible. Gorsh, or his minions won’t dare to come here, and the plain crazies stay where they know they’ll be looked after; that’s The Second City. But nothing will happen to her. The business district of this Station is as peaceful as my parents’ vineyard.”

  So why was there a prickle in his nape every time he thought about it?

  *****

  Xoraya was thrilled to be out on the Space Station on her own.

  She liked Mikal r’ma Trodden a lot; if one had to have a human babysitter, she thought wryly, one could do a lot worse than him. For a short-life, and a young one at that, he was intelligent and broad-minded; easy to get along with, in fact. Nevertheless, it was pleasant to be walking around on her own, looking around her at her own pace, stopping to examine whatever happened to catch her eye without wondering if she was slowing his progress down.

  First, Xoraya retraced the route that she and Mikal had walked on their arrival, between the Port and Hostel 17, only this time she, of course, went in the opposite direction. They had taken the main walkway, a broad promenade, which in the business district was lined with shops of all kinds on both sides, and decorated with a profusion of living, potted plants, plenty of benches for the tired to rest on, and ornate tables and chairs, here and there, for those who preferred such, or brought out snacks and drinks from the cafes and food stalls. At this time of the morning there were fewer people about than there had been during the afternoon trek from the Port, but enough for people-watching.

  The humans came in such a variety! There were the slight, pale Lamanians who hid their large, hairless heads under colourful, hooded garments, looking vaguely like giant babies walking around, wrapped in towels. The stocky, dark-skinned Shelonians were very much a contrast to them, and apparently delighted in dressing in a riot of colours and styles. The Torrones were as dark-skinned and dark-haired as the Shelonians, but towered over them, tall, well-muscled and magnificent. Xoraya saw a few Borhquan men with their abundant hair. Their head hair extended down the back in a luxurious V-formation—most of which was not visible under clothes, but which she knew about through her studies. The Borhquan women, she remembered, had the body hair on their bellies, apparently “to keep any unborn babies warm”. She eyed the Borhquans curiously, knowing that Mikal was half-Borhquan, half-Lamanian: in him, she decided, the Borhquan look of strength and vigour had been muted by the Lamanian air of delicacy—a false air, as she well knew from her study of human history. The Lamanians, for all their appearances, were a tough race, and had out-fought and out-witted many others who seemed much more powerful.

  “Mikal’s probably quite fortunate in his background,” she mumbled to herself as she ambled along. “Combination of old Lamanian and young Borhquan likely gives him vigour of mind and physique, both.”

  After turning back from the entrance to the Station Port Facilities, she started to explore in earnest. On the way to the restaurant where she and Mikal had met Maryse and her companions, Mikal had pointed out to her the alleys that led away from the main Boulevard; they zigzagged through the less pricey areas of the Commercial District, he had told her, and contained some of the more interesting small shops, bistros, and taverns. In fact, he had told her, the sex-for-sale shops were along one of these narrow lanes, the one nearest to the Port.

  “It’s an alley that’s rather amusing to walk down,” he had told her, “at its best in the evening. However, evenings are when you’re the most likely to be harassed by offers of ‘merchandise’ of both sexes; so if you just want to look around, the best time to go through there is early in the day when the workers in the trade are still resting from the night before.”

  She decided to walk through this red-light district. Medovites was the name of the people who mostly staffed the brothels, that was what Mikal had told her. Since, generally, they brought their families with them wherever they worked there ought to be some kind of life in the alley, presuming that the families lived where the parents plied their trade. Xoraya realized that she had no idea if this was so here, even if it was normal practise for Medovites elsewhere. Well, there was one way to find out, and that was to walk through the area and see if there were children around in what passed as the outdoors; surely children of every kind took the opportunity to play outside their homes whenever they had the chance!

  She smiled to herself, remembering her own days as a hatchling, when she had been quick to slip outdoors into the sunshine from her clan’s rocky abode in the desert mountains. The adults had preferred the cool of the shady rooms but the little ones had loved to scamper in the bright sun, to the annoyance of their older relatives, especially the ones whose task it was to keep track of the hatchlings, and make sure that they stayed safe. Not that the Xeonsaurs had many enemies on their home planet, but there were a few birds of prey which were not above swooping down to grab a sunning lizard hatchling for lunch when the opportunity presented itself.

  The red-light district did prove to be rather uninteresting in mid-morning. The pleasure houses were closed, and there were very few strollers in the alley, and no-one at all seated on the benches or the tables which were sprinkled here
and there along the lane. The signs announcing the names of the various Houses were mostly not lit up; a circumstance which Xoraya assumed meant that the Houses were closed to business. In front of one of them, a half-a-dozen children were crawling all over a bench, a box of toys lying on the ground next to it. The children, not much more than toddlers of both sexes, were laughing and talking in shrill voices, in a language which Xoraya did not understand. She memorized the way they looked—they were rather innocuous-looking with light brown hair, light brown skin, and sandy eyes—thinking to check with the Hostel Communications Console later as to what the Medovites looked like.

  The children turned to stare at her as she walked by, nodding to them and smiling. There were no return greetings, only pairs of wide eyes watching her as she passed, while at least a couple of thumbs sneaked between pink rose-bud lips. Then she was by them, and as quickly as the talk and laughter had evaporated, their noise resumed behind her.

  Suddenly, ahead of her, a door opened (quietly, like all the doors on the Space Station seemed to slide open and shut), and the sounds of raucous adult laughter reached her. A handful of brightly-dressed, very tall and thin humans erupted from a House which still had its signage lit; it must have been one of the all day and night establishments, of which there seemed to be a sprinkling around.

  “Vultairian Exalted,” she murmured under her breath.

  The very folk whose compatriots Maryse r’ma Darien wanted to investigate! There were five of them, two women and three men, enough to block the whole narrow alley as they strolled slowly along it in the same direction as Xoraya was heading. They appeared to have had an entertaining time at the House, for they were engaged in an animated discussion of which she could not catch the details, not being in possession of a translation node which could enhance her senses. She watched their backs curiously, however, as she ambled, falling behind them as their long legs sped them along.