by Wil McCarthy
“Are you really going to the ocean?” Don Kowalski asked.
“Er,” said Jack-Jack, “actually, no. I was talking about a trip we made four hundred years ago. But I could arrange it for you, of you like.”
“Really?” The man's face split into a grin. “That would be great.”
The Unuan boy came up to them again, moving forward with uncertain steps. “Excuse me. Are you folks from Earth? Would you speak with me for a moment?”
He had dropped the placard somewhere, and now, since he had framed his question with at least a modicum of politeness, Jhoe felt compelled to answer. But Jack-Jack beat him to it, saying quietly, “Not now, vireto. Save yourself some trouble and go home.”
His voice was gentle, reasonable, even a little indulgent. But it seemed edged with threat, as well, a paternal warning that left no room for argument. The young man, looking quite crestfallen, seemed to realize the remark had been the end of any hope of conversation. Glumly and without another word, he turned and walked off into the gloom.
“Youth activists?” Don Kowalski asked.
Jack-Jack watched the boy's retreat with sympathetic eyes. “Unfortunately, yes. We've started to have trouble, these past fifty years. The world's getting too slow and comfortable, I guess. Very sad, really. It's one of the reasons we left Earth in the first place. Of course, when we left I was about a hundred, and was not considered young. I'm the oldest man in the world, by the way. Have I mentioned that?”
“I believe so,” Jhoe said with tired diplomacy.
Jack-Jack flashed his teeth, and cuffed Jhoe on the shoulder again. “Just teasing. Every day is a history lesson with me, eh? But even history ends. You can manage from here, I hope. There's someone waiting for you inside.”
Jhoe blinked, momentarily confused. Was he being abandoned?
“Oh, come on!” Jack-Jack said, putting an arm around Don Kowalski's shoulders and grinning broadly. “Share me! There's lots to go around! I wanted to see you safely down, and to have a little chat, and I've done that. But I'm much too old to play tour guide. They've got somebody from the Power Board to do that for you.”
“The Power Board?”
“Oh, yes. Very important, the Power Board. Keep the lights on, keep the citizens from getting frightened. It's quite an honor, really. You should be flattered.”
“Um,” Don Kowalski said, extricating himself from Jack-Jack's embrace. “Maybe I could find my own way. Maybe the electricity guy could help me?”
“Nonsense! I wouldn't hear of it!”
Already, Jack-Jack was leading the other man away.
“There are some things you should know about the Other Ocean. Saline? It'll take your skin right off...”
Jhoe faced the flimsy terminal building once again. The voices began to fade, leaving him. Leaving him alone in this place, so far from all he had known. He felt very small, suddenly, on the spaceport field. And dry-mouthed, and uncomfortably warm in this strange air, beneath this strange sky. Even the pavement seemed strange, a sand-colored, vaguely bumpy surface that gave with curious softness beneath his feet. Not pavement at all, then, but some kind of thick rubber sheet? Deep cracks ran along it in places.
“...and you move slowly, so the andlius won't bite...” Jack-Jack's voice carried on the breeze.
“Didn't anyone assign a liaison or something?” he heard Don Kowalski ask. But Jack-Jack talked on, unconcerned. Voices fading now, bodies lost in gloomy shadow between the field lights.
Dubiously, Jhoe started toward the building. The other people, the Malhelans, had already dispersed, but several of them had gone in here. The heavy fabric of the walls shone yellow-white in the lights, and cast weird shadows on the ground. Paler, brighter light was visible behind the windows, but they looked milky, translucent. Perhaps hung behind with gauze curtains?
The wide, double door had been painted a bright green that burned into his eyes even through the nighttime gloom. The door had a pair of brass handles, things apparently meant to be grasped and turned and pulled to disengage the latching mechanism, and a low concrete ramp leading up to it. It seemed the sort of building which, in a children's story book, might house a wicked witch or a family of trolls.
Three more strides carried him to the top of the ramp, where he paused. Grasped the handles, turned them, pulled. The doors swung wide. Cool air and brightness greeted him.
Rows of chairs inside, bolted to the floor. Rows of holie screens hanging down from the ceiling (which, unlike the walls, looked straight and flat and solid). Dozens of people in here, men and women in bright clothing. A voice, improbably high and lilting in its delivery, spoke quietly from a sound generator somewhere.
“...departure in twenty minutes. Brava Navedo, now boarding for departure in twenty minutes. Fiera Navedo will begin boarding in one hour, for departure at...”
A man, standing nearby, turned toward Jhoe. “You're letting the heat in.” He wore a formal suit, cut broadly of glossy yellow fabric.
“What?” said Jhoe.
“You're letting the heat in,” the man repeated. “Close the doors.”
“Oh. Right.” Jhoe had already stepped through the doorway, but the doors had not shut themselves behind him. Of course, that would be too easy. He turned and, with some hesitation, grabbed the inside handles and pulled them toward him. Turning them and pulling in on them at the same time seemed a little awkward, but as the doors swung to he found he really only needed to pull. The latch, fortunately, engaged by itself.
The yellow-suited man looked at him oddly as he turned around again.
“Has something disturbed you?” Jhoe asked. He felt acutely aware of the traces of bile on his face, on his shirt. The flight crew had given him a moistened, scented cloth to freshen up with, but still he did not feel quite clean. His hair, he suspected, had also seen better times.
“You're from Earth,” the man said, making a simple statement of it but falling short of actual rudeness. “You people are down here already?”
“Oh, yeah, just a couple of us. Others will follow soon, I think.” Relaxing, Jhoe stuck out his hand. “Doctor Jhoe Freetz.”
The man stared uncertainly at the hand.
“Oh, my apologies,” Jhoe said quickly. His first faux pas on Unua: he knew they did not shake hands in the Terran way. He crossed his arms, palms down, and offered those to the man instead.
Relaxing visibly, the man reached out, crossing his own arms, and grasped Jhoe's hands. Gently, he shook them. “Salutes, Doctor Jhoe Freetz. My name is Lano.”
Jhoe gave a smile and the hint of a formal bow. “It pleases me to meet you. I only wish I could be more presentable.”
“My name is Sheyla Awk,” said a voice at Jhoe's side. He turned to see a small-framed woman standing there, and another woman behind her. A man, clad in a white shirt and light blue overalls, was moving up, and in moments Jhoe found himself surrounded by Unuans holding crossed hands out at him.
Momentarily, he fought down a sense of fear. Earth people did not behave this way toward strangers. Nor did Lunans, nor Martians. Violating en masse his space-of-reach! And yet, there seemed no menace in this, but friendliness only. Their faces were all smiles and curiosity.
He thought of the long, lonely weeks on Introspectia, of the difficulty of approaching Tomus and Yezu. That effort had intimidated him greatly. He had made no other friends.
And he thought, then, of Jack-Jack, who had accosted him almost without introduction. Who had assumed control of Jhoe's movement and activities for hours, and then abandoned him, with equal brevity, in an unknown place.
The waltz of social graces ran differently here. Perhaps here they did not waltz at all.
“It pleases me to meet you, Sheyla Awk.” he said, reaching out to shake the small woman's hands, offering her a smile.
He shook hands almost continuously for the next several minutes. “It pleases me to meet you, Vickie. It pleases me to meet you, Potter Chino. It pleases...”
“Are y
ou through yet?” A woman asked him over the heads of the crowd.
He grinned widely at her, pleased now by all the attention. He felt like a Source Link personality, connected to disparate admirers he had never met. “Your turn will come soon!”
“I'm Uriel Zeng!” The woman called out, evidently annoyed. “Will you please hurry up?”
Jhoe, shaking another set of hands, looked squarely at her. “When your turn comes, yes, I will.”
The woman made a face, her eyes rolling upward, lips curling back momentarily to reveal the teeth below. “That's it,” she said. “I came here as favor. You can find your own quaking ride.”
She started to turn away, and Jhoe saw that her clothing did not resemble that of the other Malhelans he'd met. She wore a jumpsuit, colored a fairly mild shade of green, like uncut grass, and bearing patches and insignia of various sorts on the front and back and shoulders.
Technicians look the same, he thought wryly, on any planet.
“Wait a minute,” he called out to her.
She paused.
“Did you come from the Power Board? Did Jack-Jack send you?”
Jhoe's Malhelan friends, sensing their time had passed, began to melt away.
“I came from the Power Board,” the woman said coolly. “I don't know anyone named Jack-Jack.”
“Jack-Jack Snyder? One of the Originals?”
“I don't know him. Are you coming with me or not?”
Earthly society considered Jhoe a fairly young man, and in general, for the sake of propriety, he tried to behave as one. But he did, after all, have almost thirteen decades' experience in dealing with difficult people. Finding, suddenly, that thirteen decades were quite enough, he dropped the last bits of his grin.
“Miss, I get very tired of being shuffled around like a box of freight. I've had a very long and difficult journey, and I'll thank you to behave more civilly toward me.”
The last of Jhoe's admirers slipped away, finding they had business elsewhere in the terminal.
The woman's expression did not change. The distance between the two of them did not shrink. “You're staying, then?”
Jhoe sighed, the weariness rushing back into him. “I feel tempted to decline your offer, miss, but I suppose, politically speaking, it would be unwise. It would also leave me stranded.”
“Fine,” she said. Then, in a voice of false courtliness: “I would be delighted if you would accompany me to the chopter pad. I take it you'd like to rest before seeing the city?”
“Yes, I would,” he said, opting to ignore her sarcasm. Things were off to a bad enough start already.
“Shall we go then?”
Hefting his bag once again, he nodded as politely as he could. Which, he thought, wasn't very. She started moving, and he followed her.
Just then the walls around them began to quiver, the floor to ripple beneath their feet. A floor of palm-sized hexagonal tiles, he saw, hinged with some flexible caulk so that the quake could roll right through without cracking the tiles. And roll it did, in low, solid waves that moved with visible speed, that snapped at Jhoe's feet like rugs being pulled out from under him, one after the other.
“Damn it!” He shouted as he wobbled off balance. This planet seemed determined to make things difficult for him.
“Steady,” the woman said, calmly grabbing Jhoe's elbow.
“Let go of me!” He snapped, then immediately regretted it. Fortunately, the woman did not let go.
They were silent for a few seconds, the woman outwardly calm, Jhoe inwardly, gloweringly angry at everyone and everything.
The quake tapered away, its little shockwaves fading. The floor became flat and solid once again.
“I'm sorry,” the woman said, politely. “I thought you might fall.”
Jhoe found his anger cooling. He licked his lips, shook his head. “No, miss. I'm sorry. That was very thoughtful of you.”
“Stop calling me 'miss,'“ she said. “My name is Uriel Zeng.”
Jhoe hefted his bag up higher on his shoulder, and offered her his crossed fists. “It pleases me to meet you, Uriel Zeng.” His voice was serious.
She looked at him for a moment, and then snorted. “Yeah, okay. Are you coming?” She did not shake his hands.
They left the terminal building through a different exit than the one Jhoe had come in through, and walked out onto a differently colored, differently paved surface. The darkness and the thick, dry heat swirled around them like a strange fog. Politely, Jhoe turned and closed the doors behind them.
“It's hazy out today,” Uriel Zeng said, ahead of him. “I guess you won't see much of the sky.”
“I suppose not,” Jhoe said. “Do you think it'll burn off when the sun comes up?”
Uriel snorted again, and flicked him a contemptuous look. “They are up, Doctor. Both of them.”
“Really,” Jhoe said, his voice calm while his eyes darted, taking in the murky blackness around him.
But for the peculiar, double-clicky sound of their shoes on the rubbery pavement, the walk continued in silence. He didn't think Uriel would ever guess how horrified he'd really been at this moment.
~~~
Jhoe opened his eyes, and came fully awake when he saw the gray-white plastic ceiling above him. In the dim light it looked glossy, with the sort of cheap ugliness you almost never saw on Earth. And here and there, it had cracked in little spiderweb patterns. That cut right through his sleepy confusion, let him know right away that he had not awoken in his NAU dormitory, nor his parents' mountain home, nor in his cabin aboard Introspectia. That he had awoken, rather, on a gigantic bed in the penthouse of the Verva Hotelo, city of Verva, planet Unua of Malhela system. Thirty-eight light-years too far from home, he rather suspected.
Uriel had brought him here, after a harrowing flight through dark, hazy skies and an even more harrowing landing on the hotel's roof. She'd strutted around a little, spoken briefly to the staff. And then, like Jack-Jack, she'd abandoned him to his fate, which, not surprisingly, turned out to consist of many hours of deep and unbroken sleep.
He kicked off the light sheets now and sat up, looking around at the apartment. Uriel had called it “splendid” or “fabulous” or something, and tired as he felt he hadn't really questioned her assessment. But now... He saw that someone had stenciled monochromatic images directly onto the plastic walls, plants and animals and craggy ridges in black silhouette, without even frames to surround them. Here and there he saw clear plastic tables, and atop them plastic vases full of dead flowers that seemed, against reason, to have been arranged with some pretense of artfulness. Round, meter-wide windows circled the room at shoulder height, and through them he could see a distorted image of city and sky. Daytime sky? A ruddy glow bathed the room, like firelight.
Jhoe wondered whether Uriel Zeng knew the word “shabby,” and if so, what dire conditions might cause her to speak it aloud.
“Lights up,” he said, then sighed when he remembered that the room had no computer. Rolling over, he hunted for the manual switch on the wall behind him, found it, turned it. The lights came up, white and harsh and entirely too bright.
The sheets, vaguely slick, very thin and very soft, tickled against his skin as he slid out of the bed. His feet found the floor, and were not uncomfortable there. Textured plastic, neither hot nor cold. He walked to one of the windows.
I can't believe I'm here, he thought. I never expected this, never in all my life. The Malhela expedition, grand adventure of a lifetime, had never seemed particularly real to him, not even in the cramped months aboard Introspectia. He hadn't felt the magnitude of it all, deep down in his heart, but then it had been his reason, not his heart, that had led him here.
Suddenly his heart, thumping heavily inside his chest, seemed to catch up with events. He felt a wash of joy, and terror, and excitement of a sort he hadn't experienced for more decades than he could count on his hands. Sprawled before him in lens-distorted glory, the city of Verva lay waiting for his atte
ntions.
Low buildings lined up in crisp regiments all around, and lamps hung from their corners and sides, illuminating the streets below. People moved about down there, looking like chessmen on a strange, oversized board, and ground vehicles big and small zipped between them. Above, the sky simmered with a twilight glow that looked at first like haze backlit by a rising sun. But when Jhoe craned his head a little, he saw that the “haze” had a definite edge, a definite circular shape. It was the brown dwarf, Vano!
Vano looked like a ball of iron in a dark, hot fire, except that—staggeringly—the thing filled a good quarter of the sky, dwarfing all that lay beneath it. Like a thunderhead made of sputtering flame, like God's burning fist about to smash this planet to flinders. Jhoe's mind could not quite take it in.
It had looked so different through the windows of Introspectia's observation lounge! Space was so large around him there, a full 360-degrees in every direction he could look. But with ground beneath him for reference, he could appreciate better the enormity, the proximity, of the star. And people lived here, on the hot and shaky ground directly beneath it. That seemed, suddenly, like a kind of miracle.
His pessimism had fallen away like a shed skin. He knew, now, that the ground tremors occurred mainly when Vano loomed at its zenith, and eight hours later when it lurked at nadir behind the planet. Four hours until they started today? Something like that.
Uriel didn't seem to joke about the tremors, but neither did she seem concerned by them; they came every day with little variation in intensity. One simply planned around them and gave them no further thought.
And the tent-buildings, soft and ridiculous as they were, held no special place in Unuan architecture. In yesterday's terror flight he'd seen quite a variety of construction styles, and now he could see more, and more clearly. Nothing soaring, towering, skyward-reaching like you saw in Terran cities, but here below was a little pueblo-ish thing that seemed cast of red cement, and there a graceful dome of burnished metal.
There, an ugly tent, and next to it a beautiful, sweeping one that looked like some kind of three-dimensional math function graph. And over there, a low and narrow building that looked like somebody's caricature of a brick shit-house.
