Alien Earth
Alien Earth
Megan Lindholm
A classic science fiction adventure from the backlist of Megan Lindholm, who also writes as Robin Hobb.Generations ago humanity abandoned Earth. Now they have returned.Far from home, the Human race tries to atone for killing Terra thousands of years ago. Rescued by the enigmatic Arthroplana in their mysterious Beastships, they have been inserted into the fragile ecologies of the alien twin worlds of Castor and Pollux, where they must make no impact, where every drop of water must be returned. Humanity has adjusted – or tried to.Despite the constant watch of the Arthroplana and the Human Conservancy, John Gen-93-Beta has agreed to captain the Beastship Evangeline on an unthinkable journey to a dead planet… Earth.And so begins an engrossing voyage of discovery for five travellers: John, his First Mate Connie, stowaaway Raef, Tug the Arthroplana and the Beastship Evangeline herself. On a planet none quite expected, each learns the power of being human.
Voyager
Megan Lindholm
Alien Earth
Contents
Cover (#ulink_f5f5fa29-aacc-5042-94c9-c478a228b89b)
Title Page
Prologue
The table was cold and hard under his back. Metal.
1
“I HATE THESE DAMN SCREENS.”
2
IN COMPARISON TO the quiet of Evangeline’s gondola, the corridors…
3
SHE WAS WALKING TOO FAST. Connie consciously slowed her stride…
4
TUG FINISHED THE SEARCH of his archives. He signaled Evangeline…
5
“TOOK ONE A PIECE and left three in it.” He…
6
“CONNIE.”
7
RAEF STIRRED DROWSILY; his hands touched the unwet slickness of…
8
“BY THE WAY, Talbot is dead.”
9
“AWAKE, SWEET PRINCE.” Saccharine sarcasm. Tug must have been practicing…
10
“SO,” TUG FINISHED, “our point-by-point comparison demonstrates that Nero Wolfe…
11
JOHN STARED AT THE SCREEN. He was five days into…
12
SUMMONED. He wanted her to … chocolate. Brown, thick, sweet…
13
SHE LIFTED THE HAND she’d had clamped over her own…
14
BOREDOM. Tug’s anxiety had finally given way to an all-consuming…
15
“TUG!”
16
“IT’S GOING TO BE hot today.”
17
SUN ON HER SHOULDERS and the top of her head…
18
[/ / / / /]
19
EVANGELINE WAS SO CLOSE, she had become the horizon, a…
20
SHE HAD LEFT RAEF ALONE, with his own thoughts. It…
About the Author
Other Books by Megan Lindholm
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
The table was cold and hard under his back. Metal. Shiny stainless steel. And he was naked, save for a blue-paper hospital gown that came but halfway down his thighs. A mocking little cushion of papery tissue under his head pretended to be a pillow for his comfort. The temporary curtain-walls of the examining cubicle were made of the same papery stuff. He wanted to sit up to try to wrap the inadequate garment around him, but he didn’t dare. He was afraid it would be the wrong thing to do, that somehow it would disqualify him. All he had to do now was wait. Surely he could wait a little longer. The physical examination of his external body had gone well. All that remained now was for the lab to okay his blood and urine and stool specimens. All that remained was for the lab to find him free of drug residues, alcohol, internal and external parasites, contagious diseases, genetically carried diseases or tendencies to diseases, fungi and harmful bacteria, and anything else the Conservancy for Humankind deemed undesirable. Somehow it seemed that if he lay very still on the cold steel table, it would make it easier for them to find him pure and whole, and suitable to be a colonist. Then he could disembark from the Beastship Evangeline, and enter Station Alpha, the first step in becoming acculturated to the new ecology. He reminded himself that he had passed just such a battery of tests before being allowed to join those evacuating from Earth. This was probably just a formality, a confirmation of what the Earth team had found so many years ago. Raef pressed himself against the cold table and tried to breathe.
“Not real.” Raef tried desperately to make his lips move, to force out sounds he could hear, that would wake himself. “This isn’t real. This isn’t here, this isn’t now. Here and now, I am dreaming in a Waitsleep womb inside the Beastship Evangeline, as I have been for hundreds of years and as I will for hundreds of years to come. This isn’t real. It isn’t happening and it can’t hurt me now.”
Usually he could control the dreams. Usually he could dream what he wanted, when he wanted. The best was when he could just let himself go and sink deeper and deeper, down to where the dreams were realer than real. And better than real, too, because he could make them come out the way he wanted them to. But sometimes, once in a great while, this happened, and he got stuck. Tug gave some command to Evangeline, and in turn the great Beast adjusted Raef’s metabolism, and he got caught like this, in between, dreaming uncontrollably, and all the dreams his worst old memories.
The room was chilly, too. His bare feet were cold. He lifted his head and stared at them. How pale and uncallused they had become through the long years of existing in Waitsleep inside a womb. They reminded him of a baby’s feet, pink and wrinkled and unused. The long periods of Waitsleep did that; it could slow down an organism’s functioning, but not stop it entirely. Growth and the replacement of cells, skin cells for instance, continued. During the brief Wakeups on the ship, he had crawled from the womb, endured a cursory physical inspection by a medical team that had themselves only been awake a few hours longer than their wards. Then with the other awakened colonists, he had oiled his body and rubbed away the peeling dead skin from his hide to expose his new pink skin, had eaten a simple meal, and run in a hamster wheel to try to exercise his body against the lassitude of weightlessness. For a week or so, there had been the idle talk of other people to endure, endless speculation on what the new planets, Castor and Pollux, would be like. Interspersed with that would be the boredom of the required ecology lectures and indoctrinations into the ideals of the Conservancy, all canned stuff on video. And sometimes, whispered conversation about the Arthroplana and their strange Beastships, and why they had come to rescue the Humans from the dying Earth. And for Raef alone, when he could no longer stand the jostling companionship of the many others who shared his Wakeup times, or when the canned lectures became too didactic, there had been the exhilaration of sneaking away from the carefully orchestrated group activities and exploring the ship’s labyrinthine structure.
But not too often, for such free-spirited violations of the rules were not regarded lightly. It would be a damn shame to come this far, and then become regarded as a rebel, a maverick, someone who couldn’t be a team player. He’d seen it happen to a few; they refused the discipline of the organized Wakeup times, or challenged the information and philosophy of the lectures. They probably thought it made them look smarter than people like Raef who agreed with everything and always acted just like everyone else. Fools. Really smart people stayed away from them.
Raef remembered one man well because of his trembling paranoia. James, his name had been. And they had sat at a table during the recreation hour, aimlessly playing at checkers on a magnetic board. Raef had beaten him the last six times in a row. During the last Wakeup, Raef had beaten him every time they played. It was a new experience for Raef, who had seldom won at games before. He had just decided that it was boring when James skittered a checker across two squares and then declared hoarsely, “Know what, kid? I don’t think we’re ever going to get there.”
“What?” Raef had said, jarred out of both game and boredom.
“I don’t think we’re really going anywhere. I mean, think about it. These Arthroplana things, they come to Earth in their Beastships, but they never land. They tell us Earth is going to hell in a handcart, no one’s gonna survive, and we only have two, maybe three hundred years to get off the planet. If any Humans are gonna survive, we gotta start leaving now. But no one ever gets to see an Arthroplana, and no one knows where the hell these two planets are they’re offering to take us to. But they go, in our grandparents’ time, and in our parents’ childhood. And then they’re back for another load, and this time we, you and I, we get on. But how do we know they ever got there, the ones that went ahead of us? How do we know they aren’t just taking us out in space and dumping us, killing us off so they can have our planet for themselves? How do we know that?”
People at other tables had turned to look at them. They had listened to James rave with faces either full of pity or disbelief. Perhaps a few showed signs of alarm, but surely it was only at James’s distress, not at a sudden suspicion his words might be true. Now the gazes shifted to Raef at James’s questions, waited for his answer, as if he knew something, as if he were supposed to speak for all those who had faith in the evacuation, who believed that a tomorrow awaited them on distant twin planets spinning around a different sun.
“Well,” he had said, and faltered, wondering. How did they know? Maybe the Arthroplana had picked out the best and strongest to take into space and kill, leaving the weak and sick and elderly to die out on their own on a planet that no longer cherished life. “Well,” he had groped, “there’s the videos we have to watch. About living harmoniously with our new ecology. Someone had to make those. And, well, if they were going to kill us, why aren’t we already dead? Why bring us so far before doing it?”
“So far?” James laughed again, a laugh that cracked suddenly. “How do you know we’re far at all? No one can see out. We’re in the belly of the Beast. How do you know it’s been so long? They say we’ve slept for years, for decades. Maybe it’s only been a single night of drugged sleep. How can we tell anything for ourselves?” James lowered his voice suddenly, and those not already clustered around the table drew closer to hear. “How do we know we aren’t dead already? How do we know this isn’t hell?”
“Well … because …” Raef groped, and then the omnipresent voice of Tug, the Arthroplana that controlled their Beastship and announced all their hours for them, proclaimed, “Wakeup Period Twenty-seven is now drawing to a close. Please void your bladders and empty your bowels before returning to your wombs. If assistance is needed with your umbilical coupler, inform the monitor in your womb chamber. Thank you.”
Raef was glad to unclip his safety harness and kick free of the table, leaving James to put the checkers and board away. He followed the stream of people leaving the rec chamber, to merge in the hallway with other people en route to the lavatories and then on to their womb chambers, to crawl inside and couple up to their life-support tubes and then to drift back into sleep. Now that Raef considered it, he didn’t remember ever seeing James at any of the subsequent Wakeups. What had ever happened to James?
“Get out of there. Get out of there. Get out of there.” Raef ground out the words, trying to feel his teeth grit, his lips move as he begged his dream self to escape from the examining room. It was like an out-of-body experience as he looked down on himself, naked and vulnerable on the table, and yet was himself, waiting anxiously for the screening team’s return.
He had to use a bathroom. After all the urine samples and blood he’d given to them, it seemed incredible that there were any liquids left in his body, but he had to piss soon or he was going to explode. The more he tried to lie still and ignore it, the more threatening the pressure in his bladder became. Had to go. Well, maybe if he was quick about it, he could be back in the examination cubicle before they came back.
He rolled off the table, caught at a rung to still himself, and then tried to grip his paper gown closed behind him. It turned out he had a choice; holding the gown closed, or coping with low-G movement.
“Get out of there, damn it all, get out of there,” Raef whimpered in his sleep. The small comfort of telling himself it was just a dream-remembrance was fast slipping away. If he was caught, it was all over.
He knew the layout of the ship well from his unauthorized explorations. Lavatory was just three chambers from here, once he left the row of curtained alcoves they’d set up in the rec chamber for these final screenings. He was just leaving the chamber when he heard the screening team returning by the other entrance. He would never know what made him pause instead of immediately hastening back to his table, nor what trick of the acoustics carried the incredulous whisper to his ears.
“You’re shitting me! Cancer? How the hell could they have missed that at boarding?”
“Very small tumor, I guess. But it’s been growing while he was in Waitsleep. Big enough to detect now. Shut the hell up.”
“Okay, okay. Which one was it?”
“Raefferty, Terrence. He’s …”
But Raef was moving down the corridor, running breathlessly along before even they could finish speaking his name. He felt shock, not at hearing it, but at finding that he was not surprised by it. There had been a chance, he had always known there had been a chance. His mom had died of it, and his grandfather. He hadn’t told them that at the preboarding exam. He’d know they’d say it constituted a genetic tendency toward the disease. They’d have refused him.
It wasn’t fair, it was never fair to him. This shit was always happening to him, and he never deserved any of it. But he’d be punished for it just the same, just as always. Someday he’d make them all see how unfair it was, how none of it had been his fault.
But for now, he fled, mindlessly, brachiating down the corridor rungs faster than Tarzan of the Apes could have gone. His paper gown fluttered in the wind of his passage, marking him as strange, and he deliberately took every turning that would carry him away from the normally trafficked areas of the ship. There would be a search, he knew. Eventually, they’d find him. So why not stop now, go back, get it over with?
Because.
It was all too familiar, this sensation of fleeing, and the hasty reconstruction of himself as someone else, as Tarzan or Peter Pan or Mega Man or Long John Silver. It used to be the big boys on the playground, chasing him with ready fists and boots. Now it was a lab team in white coats. It was all the same. If he was caught, they would hurt him. And there’d be no one to make them stop.
He fled on, leaving the bright corridors for dimmer ones that branched out into areas of the ship already emptied of sleeping passengers. Womb chamber after womb chamber he passed, until their multitude almost dizzied him. And then ahead of him, the unused corridors were dark, and he fled into them, relying on the consistent spacing of the rungs to let him proceed. On he fled, heart hammering and his mouth so dry he thought his throat would crack. On, until a sudden cramp in his side made him miss his grip and sent him flying into the resilient corridor wall. He rebounded into dark emptiness and settled very slowly to the floor. Raef lay still, half stunned, clutching at the cramp in his side. Little by little the pain receded and even his breathing steadied. He caught his breath, swallowed in a dry throat, and sat up cautiously. He looked back the way he thought he had come. Blackness. Ahead was the same.
He tried to keep calm, tried to assess his situation. What would they do? He wasn’t sure. But he knew what they wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t let him leave the Beastship and become a colonists on a new planet. It didn’t seem likely to him that they’d send him back to Earth. A stray phrase from the Conservancy lectures came back to him. “Pity for the deformed and diseased swiftly devolves into a form of cruelty. Extending the lives of the unfit is not a worthwhile pursuit for Humanity. The strengthening of our species is.” The lecture had been explaining the need for rigorous controls on breeding once the planets were reached, but he didn’t doubt that the same policy would extend to him.
Raef gathered himself to this feet. For a few moments he felt about in the darkness for a rung, before his arm muscles cramped and he realized he couldn’t rung any farther. He stood a moment longer, darkness and silence pressing him as heavily as the knowledge of his disease, the imperfection that would let them kill him.
“Help me!” He spoke it aloud to the darkness, hopelessly. “God, help me!”
“What do you require?”
It was either the voice of God, or the voice of Tug himself, the one that had dictated all their awakenings and sleepings all this long way. It didn’t seem to Raef that it mattered which. It asked him what he needed as if it could grant it.
“Sanctuary,” he begged.
“Sanctuary?”
“They’ll kill me if they find me. Because I have …”
“I know. But you still want to live?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t be much of a life.”
“It will be better than death.”
“Interesting.” The voice sounded intrigued. “This way.”
The corridor lit dimly before him. He followed the light, glancing back once to see it fading behind him. It led him far, winding deeper and deeper into the ship, and finally to a womb chamber, where wombs hung slackly grey, waiting.
“Enter one,” said the voice. “You’ll be safe here.”
Raef didn’t hesitate, but crawled into a womb, discarding his paper gown on the way. He groped and found the umbilical cord, coupled it to the fitting still implanted in his belly. He curled himself for Waitsleep.
“What will you have?” the voice asked, muffled by the walls of the womb. “Without the companionship of other Humans, without a hope of a home, with no future save what you have this minute? What will you have worth living for?”
“The only things I’ve ever had,” Raef muttered. “My dreams.”
He could feel his heart beating, beating too fast, dammit, Tug, don’t you notice my heart is going too fast? The dreams merged, touching until he couldn’t tell them from now, that curling into Waitsleep from this sinking away from the too-vivid dream memory. Finally, he escaped the old nightmare the only way he could, by retreating into a deeper dream.
Long John Silver stands on the deck of his ship, the wind is in his face. Above his head, the sails crack and the crew bustles up the lines to carry out his orders. For on this ship, he is no stowaway, but is the captain, and one word from him can set a lash to a man’s back, or gift him an extra ration of grog….
1
“I HATE THESE DAMN SCREENS.”
Tug didn’t reply to John’s complaint. Neither did Connie, but at least John had the satisfaction of seeing her hunch a little tighter into her own station, nervously aware of the captain’s frustration and displeasure. He glared at the bank of monitors. Runny images. Another one of the Conservancy’s negative improvements. He rubbed again at the biotrol strip that was supposed to stimulate the screens to greater brightness. Nothing happened.
“What’s the matter with the monitor bank?” he demanded, and when he got no reply, he raised his voice in sarcastic incredulity. “Is it biodegrading right before my very eyes?”
Still no answer. Connie’s solution to any problem was to shut up and make herself small until someone else handled it. This was the deckhand’s second ship-out on Evangeline, and John still hadn’t figured out how to get her to react in a constructive way. In her own way, she was as frustrating to him as the dimming monitors. He didn’t understand it. Her papers were good, her scores for her ratings exemplary. Even John’s personal sources had given good reports of her. Or had they? He frowned, remembering Andrew’s words.
“Quiet.” First Mate Andrew on the Beastship Trotter had characterized Connie when John had requested a very unauthorized personal opinion of Andrew’s former shipmate. “Not unfriendly, but quiet. I didn’t know her that well. But from what everyone says, she’s supposed to be very bright. Very competent. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in her. I know you like your privacy, John. Well, so does she. Should work out well, you two hermits rattling around in a scow that size. You can come out of Waitsleep, grunt at each other, and go back in without bothering each other at all.”
So John had hired her, more on Andrew’s word than on her high ratings on the standardized tests. And found her not competent or bright, but only quiet. Very quiet. And passive to the point where it was driving him crazy. Needling her only seemed to make the crewwoman more reclusive, and yet there were times he could not resist doing it, just for the sake of getting some kind of reaction from her. She seemed to have all the personality and social skills of an algae vat. Thanks a lot, Andrew. I owe you one.
As for Tug’s silence, well, the Arthroplana was playing at protocol again. Speak when spoken to. John hated it, but gave in and addressed him by name. “Tug. Can you boost the monitor screen from your side or something? Something’s got to be malfunctioning; nothing this fuzzy could have met standards. I don’t remember the monitor images being this bad last time we used them.” That, of course, had been a number of years and several Wakeups ago. Still, the ship’s equipment wasn’t supposed to biodegrade that fast.
The picture improved minimally as Tug made whatever adjustments he could from his separate living quarters within Evangeline’s body. Tug’s synthetic voice thrummed softly through the command chamber. “My readings indicate that the picture is within the parameters for acceptable vision. It has, as you noted, biodegraded somewhat since our last use of the equipment. The bacterial action that triggers the luminors may be slowing. If you are so dissatisfied with it, I suggest you might have the unit recolonized while we’re docked at Delta. Still, according to all my references, the image is within safe and acceptable parameters.”
“Safe and acceptable parameters? Tug, don’t try to tell me that this image is as good as the one we got on the old equipment that they made us turn in for this.”
Tug considered a moment. “While the image may not be as sharp nor as adjustable, the equipment is much more harmonious with the environment. All components are completely recyclable with a waste factor of less than point two percent.”
“Wonderful. We can’t see a damn thing on the screen, but we can be content knowing that the whole thing can be remanufactured into something even less useful with a minimum of waste.”
Tug either couldn’t think of a reply or chose not to. John crossed his arms on his chest and settled back into his couch. Despite his resolutions, the true source of his frustration pushed itself to the front of his mind again. It had been the first message up on his screen when he’d come out of Waitsleep. Norwich Shipping thanked John, Tug, crew, and the Evangeline herself for their years of service, but were regretful to inform him that such services were no longer required. References would be furnished, of course. Brief and to the point. And totally maddening in that John could think of no reason why they would want to terminate their contract with the Evangeline. She was the only Beastship around that was still unmodified from the old Lifeboat days. No one else had their cargo capacity. They’d never missed a deadline or screwed up a delivery. It made no sense at all, and it promised to turn what should have been a relaxing shore time into a maze of negotiations as John hunted down new clients for the Evangeline. Dammit, it made no sense.
He wanted to stew on Norwich Shipping’s sudden refusal to renew their contract, but was distracted by one monitor’s image. It was a station relay of Evangeline approaching the dock. Not even the fuzziness of the degrading biologics could totally obscure the beauty of the Beast that powered his ship. He ignored the functional cell-meld structure of the gondola fastened to Evangeline; that was but the container that housed the Human crew and provided cargo space. It had no intrinsic beauty, only functional practicality. No, it was Evangeline herself—the organic Beast portion of his Beastship—that captivated him. He realized abruptly that he had been staring silently at the screen for several minutes. After all these years, she could still entrance him like that. He snorted at his own sentiment, and shifted his gaze to another monitor.
It showed him Delta Station. He’d grown up on Beta Station, which was identical to Delta and the other two dirty-tech stations that orbited Castor. It made for maximum efficiency in manufacturing components and maintaining the stations. Maximum boredom, too. He knew every seam and span in the construction of the stations from his days as a maintenance shuttle pilot. It had been thirty-seven years for the station dwellers since he had last been here, but it looked to him as if only his subjective three months had passed; if the Conservancy had made any changes in Delta, they weren’t readily apparent. Just looking at the unimaginative functionality of the station crumpled the moment of peace he’d felt in watching Evangeline’s organic opulence and renewed his earlier discontentment. The exterior of the station mirrored too accurately the blandly efficient interior of the station, of all the stations, even of his own ship.
Well, in a short time he’d be plunged into that grindingly efficient and correct place. It had been bad enough when all that meant was off-loading a cargo and picking up a new consignment. At least then he’d been free to follow his own interests, which usually meant spending the bulk of his pay on information and entertainments for his library. But this time it meant work, and real work, lining up a new client for Evangeline’s services. Reflecting that this type of task was one of the major reasons a Human captain was required at all on Evangeline didn’t cheer him. Tug was too fond of reminding him, “You are the captain of the ship, John, but I control the Beast.”
He glanced once more at the monitor that showed Evangeline’s approach. John fought it for an instant, then let his heart swell as it always did when confronted with the wonder of his ship. Dammit, she was his ship, just as much as Tug’s. She was more than that, she was his world. He’d spent the vast majority of his many years within her, and that, as much as anything, made her his. And he was glad. The Beastship Evangeline moved as lightly as he imagined thistledown had in Terra’s winds. He sometimes thought that perhaps his ship looked like thistledown, on a cosmic scale. The immensity of the cell-meld-constructed gondola fastened to her body was negated to insignificance by the delicacy of her lacy sails and fans and the angel-hair finery of her lines and filaments. The precise angles and functionality of the gondola that hugged Evangeline’s lower body and provided quarters for her Human crew was like a rectangular scar in that forest of delicacy. John jockeyed the monitor controls and shifted to a camera view that didn’t include the gondola. Now she was all Beast, all living creature moving herself easily toward the station. Evangeline was lifting and rotating her filaments and fans in the graceful lazing movement that all Beastships made, no matter what speed they were traveling at. Not for the first time, John stared at that seemingly idle shifting, at the play of the station’s reflected lights on her translucent body, and wondered how the hell the Beasts moved through space so effortlessly. One hank of filaments moved suddenly and coordinatedly in what could have been a venting of gases, a steerage correction, or simply a stretching of tissue as Evangeline brought them closer to docking.
“Tug,” he said softly, staring at the screen. “Tell her she’s beautiful.”
“Tell whom, John?”
He didn’t lift his gaze. “Evangeline. Tell her she’s beautiful.”
“I can’t do that, John. For one thing, she wouldn’t understand it. For another, we have found that any kind of communication with Humans, however indirect, is most unsettling to a Beast. Your culture is still, unfortunately, much too disharmonious.”
“Telling her she’s beautiful would upset her? What’s disharmonious about that?”
Tug sighed audibly, purely for the benefit of the listening Humans. John was suddenly aware of how still Connie was, how tuned in she was to this old argument between Tug and him.
“John, it is so simple. Think about it and even you will grasp it. Evangeline sees neither beauty nor ugliness, in herself or in anything else. She sees only things in their correct places, doing as they should. To speak of beauty to her would be to imply to her that this was a thing to strive for, somehow, at the expense of being harmonious with all around her. It would confuse her.”
John was silent. Tug wasn’t going to give Evangeline the message, was never going to let John have any kind of communication with the Beast that powered his ship. No, Tug kept it all for himself, and John often felt little more than an errand boy.
Sometimes, when he thought about it, it almost made him bitter. John Gen-93-Beta, captain of the Beastship Evangeline, sitting in his command lounge watching his ship rendezvous and dock with the station. And he didn’t lift a finger to control or assist it in any way, didn’t need to issue a single command, didn’t even really understand how any of it was done. The fact that the entire Human populations of Castor and Pollux and all four dirty-tech stations shared his ignorance did nothing to abate his frustration with it. The poor quality of the screen’s image only rubbed his nose in it. It didn’t matter what the Human captain saw, as long as the Arthroplana who owned her, and the Beastship herself, could perceive the correct docking coordinates. They were the ones doing all the real work. John had been more of a real captain when he had been operating one of the little scooters that performed duty maintenance on the exterior of the stations. On board the Evangeline, seated on the bridge, he was captain only of the gondola ship attached to Evangeline’s body. He did not navigate, he did not stand a watch. He was more of a social interface than anything else: a portable component of the ship that Tug could send forth to negotiate contracts, to make physical contact with Humans and other aliens, to supervise loading and unloading of any tangible cargoes they might carry. He thought of the years he had struggled to reach this position, the machinations he’d gone through, and felt his gut tighten. And yet he wouldn’t change what he had for anything else. Because it was as close as any Human could come to mastering an interstellar Beastship. As close as the Arthroplana would ever let a Human approach the freedom of the spaceways. He didn’t know any other Beastship captain who didn’t feel the same frustration with the biologically imposed ceiling on ambition. He’d reached the pinnacle of his career, but his fingertips would only brush mankind’s ambition to roam the stars.
He spared a glance for Connie, the only other Human inhabitant on the Evangeline. She was the crew, as he was the captain. Tug was the owner, and Evangeline herself was no one knew what. According to Tug and the other Arthroplanas who owned them, the Beastships were alive and almost sentient. And horribly sensitive to being peeked and probed at, which was why despite their two-thousand-year acquaintanceship, no Humans had ever been allowed more than the most cursory of inspections of one. No Human understood the mechanisms by which a Beastship fed or communicated with another Beast or with the Arthroplana within its body, let alone how they achieved light speed. When questioned by Humans about the Beastships’ method of locomotion, the Arthroplanas either professed not to understand it either, or retreated into a semantic jungle of words that had no Human equivalent, interspersed with concepts that seemed more philosophical than physical. Their “explanations” served only to give those Humans who specialized in Arthroplana psychology more to argue about among themselves. Once, during one of their quarrels, John had accused Tug and the Arthroplana in general of dissembling with Humanity merely to keep their monopoly on interstellar travel. Tug had laughed, in his most annoying simulated giggle. For ten solid minutes.
He reflected that as captain he still knew little more than the very first Humans who had boarded a Beastship “lifeboat” for the evacuation of Terra. He shifted restlessly, and tried to focus his mind on his more immediate problems.
“Check back with the ship every twelve hours while we’re in port. I don’t think our layover here will be very long. Norwich Shipping has picked up their contract option the last dozen times we’ve been here; I expect they’ll do it again, if I go in and argue with them. If they do, I want to be ready to go. And if they don’t, I want you to be ready to go with whatever I do find for us. But Norwich will be my first effort. I wonder what the hell they want to renegotiate. Probably want to lower the risk bonus again. Same old damn thing. They think because we haven’t had any accidents, there isn’t any danger in these weird runs they find for us. I’d like to see them find someone else who’d be willing to take on one of their little errands.”
John paused and waited for Connie to make some sort of response. He saw her eyes flicker in his direction, then fix on her screen again. Come on, kid, have an opinion about something, will you? He filled in the conversation himself.
“The only reason we don’t have accidents is because we’re good. No one else could handle their business for them as smoothly as we do. They’ll find that out quickly enough. In any case, I want to keep our port time and expenses as small as possible until we know where our next contract’s coming from. If we do get something, I don’t want to be held up waiting for you to report. So check back in, uh, every six hours,” he amended, and watched her.
She looked up from her own screen that was giving her an exciting view of Delta Station’s smelting and refining quadrant. Her brown eyes were huge. The stubble of hair on her scalp was dark and would possibly be curly if she were ever out of Waitsleep long enough to let it grow. John stared at it and wondered idly what she looked like with hair. She was still almost a stranger to him, for all that this was their second trip together. He wondered if she had deliberately set up her waking intervals so they wouldn’t coincide with his. Of course, that would have taken Tug’s collaboration, but he was sure she could get that with no difficulty. Tug routinely suborned crewmen almost as fast as John could hire them. Hell, Tug would probably have suggested it to her. Anything that needled John delighted the Arthroplana. And John reciprocated. He considered replacing Connie just to make Tug wonder why, then shrugged the thought away. It wouldn’t be fair. He’d hired her because Andrew had said she was quiet, competent, and would respect his privacy. Andrew knew that loud, overly friendly people drove him crazy. But Connie didn’t seem to want or need any social interaction at all. Even that he could live with, if he could ever get her to see what needed doing and just do it without waiting for a specific command from him for every separate task. Right now, she was still staring at him. “Every six hours, sir?” she asked uncertainly.
“Yes, six hours,” he replied testily. “Do you have a problem with that?” He waited for her to object that Delta Station was on a standard Terra period of twenty-four hours and that she was technically only required to report to him once each period, but she didn’t She glanced away from him.
“No problem, sir,” she said meekly, and that was that.
John resisted the urge to needle her again. He stared at her deliberately, and watched her hunch herself deeper into her station screen. The standard shipboard smock she wore strained across her wide shoulders. She’d probably been hunching like that ever since she was a child, in an effort to look smaller. It didn’t work. Even the loose uniform trousers were snug on her and too short. She was big, for a woman of her generation, but John would still be bigger than she was when they were both full-grown. After all, he was the ninety-third generation, and she was hundred and third. People had gotten a lot smaller in those ten generations.
His eyes roved the command chamber’s Spartan walls, bare monitors, functional control panels, seeking something, anything, to hang his attention on. But in Conservancy-approved fashion, there was absolutely nothing within the chamber that wasn’t necessary. Every item had an indispensable purpose. He looked at Connie and wondered briefly if that was what irritated him about her: perhaps she had a Conservancy-approved mind, all functionality, all imagination pared away in the interests of efficiency and conservation of resources.
“Connie!” he said, more sharply than he’d intended. She flinched again.
“Yes, sir?”
“Keep an eye on things. I’m going down to my quarters.”
“Yes, sir.”
She didn’t even dare to ask him what she should keep an eye on. Or maybe it never occurred to her to ask. For a moment he thought about asking her exactly what she would watch, but then decided he was too hungry to enjoy prodding at her anymore. If he got any extra time in port, and if the Beastship Trotter was in, too, and if Andrew had any extra time, maybe John could pry a little more out of him. For now, let it go. He had a few personal chores of his own to take care of before they docked. He unhooked from the harness on his lounge and swung clear on a transverse cleat. It felt good to stretch his muscles, and he flung himself out of the command chamber with more force than was necessary. Maybe he was growing, he thought as he made his way through the corridor that led to the gallery. Maybe he was even getting ready to go through the change.
“Prick,” Tug observed.
Connie flinched again. She hated herself for that. She should have been over it by now, should have been used to both John and Tug, and have stopped jumping every time one of them spoke. But John was always so caustic and critical, and Tug was always saying such unexpected things. Like now.
“Repeat, please, Tug,” she requested.
“Prick.” When Connie frowned, he continued helpfully, “Dick. Prod. Sticker.”
The last term she recognized, and giggled nervously.
“All terms for the Human male’s sexual organ,” Tug continued gravely. “And all used to express contempt for a person who receives unusual satisfaction out of being unpleasant when in a position of authority. What do you suppose we can infer about Humans from that?”
Connie shrugged and stared into her screen. She didn’t know what to make of Tug. She had only had direct contact with one other Arthroplana, and that one had never conversed casually with the Human crew, let alone been uncouth enough to criticize the captain. She tried to believe that as long as she didn’t verbally respond to it, she couldn’t be considered a party to it. If John ever overheard it, there would be big trouble for her. It could be construed as mutinous behavior. She frowned, then consoled herself that it was very unlikely John would overhear any of Tug’s comments. Tug was aware of their every movement within the gondola, of the status of every bit of their equipment, and the placement of every piece of freight within the cargo bays. He even monitored them during the time the Humans were actually inside Evangeline herself, in her Waitsleep wombs. He’d have to be supremely negligent to make such remarks in John’s hearing. Or, and she felt her spine tighten, supremely careless of what John felt. Now that was something she could imagine, and it made her mouth go dry.
“Tug,” she said abruptly, trying to sound professional and nothing more, “could you give me a status report, please? How long until we dock, and does the station have the unloading crew ready?”
“Thirty-seven minutes until docking. The unloading crew will stand by in twenty-five minutes. Really, Connie, this is a very routine docking. Although we don’t usually carry the tago-root shipments from Castor, the station receives them for processing about every ten days. It was more or less as a favor to the Beastship Hector that we stopped and picked up this shipment. For the docksiders, it’s just another routine, regular shipment to unload. It’s a very mundane task for them. Simplest sort of cargo run, and thus precisely the kind John hates. He much prefers the type of run that Norwich Shipping comes up with: quick profits from obscure or bizarre cargo, preferably after a very long trip. That’s why he’ll swallow his pride and go into Norwich’s offices and practically beg them to reconsider.”
“And if they don’t?”
She could almost hear the shrug in Tug’s voice. “We’ve already had another offer. Not that John likes it much. It’s an unspecified contract with Earth Affirmed. We made a few runs for them, quite a long time ago, back when John and I first started working together. But I gather that their reputation made John uneasy; politically, they’re quite unpopular with the Conservancy. They’ve tried to rehire us the last few times we’ve been in port, but Norwich always had an option on us. That was enough excuse for John to refuse some excellent offers from them.”
“So you think he’ll refuse them again?”
A synthesized snort. “Hard to say. You see, the only other contract he’s likely to get right now is for something rather mundane and boring, such as ore hauls. But both he and Evangeline have a very low tolerance for repetitious tasks and routine schedules. It’s one reason why I keep John, in spite of all his flaws. He harmonizes very well with Evangeline. He usually manages to get us unusual contracts that involve long-distance hauls and new places. She likes those, and so does he. John can spend the years dreaming in Waitsleep while Evangeline gets to see new places. So, I expect he’ll negotiate with Earth Affirmed rather than take anything stable and normal.” There was a trace of derision in the Arthroplana’s voice.
“I see,” Connie said softly. “Long runs.” She thought of the run they had just completed. She’d come aboard at Delta Station, thirty-seven years ago, newly hired. On the run out to Rabby and on the trip back, she’d chosen the minimum Wakeup routine. For her, a matter of days had passed. But for Delta Station and everyone on it, thirty-seven years had passed. She felt a sinking in her belly as she mused on it. Tug was mercifully silent. Thirty-seven years. The longest she’d ever been gone before had been five years, and she’d taken maximum Wakeups on that trip, so it had seemed like a year’s trip. This time, while she’d slept and then docked at Rabby and supervised the unloading of the Human-manufactured textiles and ceremonial robes that the Rabby Geltehan queen had ordered for her trouba’s rejuvenation ceremonies, and then slept and waked again, thirty-seven years had passed on Delta.
She’d chosen Waitsleep, and she told herself firmly that she didn’t regret it. “Time is a greater distance than space.” So the saying went, and she hoped she’d prove it true. She had seen her generation slowly aging away from her, two and three years at a stretch, until most of them had been twenty-seven years older than she was when she’d last left Delta. But this time, when she got off the ship, they’d be sixty-four years older than she was. They’d be ninety-seven years old now. Sexually mature. Physical adults. They might recognize her if they saw her, but she probably wouldn’t know them. And that was how she had decided she wanted it. Not to know them anymore. Not to have any contemporaries, not to have anyone who came up and looked searchingly into her eyes and complimented her on how much more relaxed she seemed since she’d gone through Readjustment. Too damn many of them had heard about her Readjustment. It would be better to go on with her life, to make new connections and friends, ones that didn’t look curiously at her and wonder just what had been wrong with her to require Readjustment.
John frowned around the cluttered walls of his awake quarters. Dammit, he was running out of room again. He thought he could fit one more restrainer shelf against the bulkhead by his lounge, as long as he always remembered it when he was sitting up. It wouldn’t leave him much head space. But the only other option was eliminating some of his reader tape collection, and he’d long passed the point in his collecting where that was really an option. Sometimes he felt he treasured the minor works of the ancient authors more than the major ones. The major ones stood a chance of survival on their own. The minor ones by the lesser thinkers would survive the Conservancy’s strict policies on information hoarding only in pirate collections like his own.
Once more his eyes roved his cluttered stateroom, so unlike the bare austerity that characterized the rest of Evangeline’s gondola chambers. There were gaps in the shelves that only his eyes could see, gaps that would never be filled: spaces for Kipling’s second Jungle Book, for Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, for the myriad sequels to Dumas’s Three Musketeers, for— He forced himself to stop thinking about everything that had been lost long years before he was born. Instead he cleared the litter from a hasty meal off his workspace, putting the packaging down the recycler and the tray itself through the cleanser.
That done, he seated himself and accessed the communications board from his terminal. He opened a private communications channel on the hobby band usually frequented only by adolescents and oldsters, and increased his security by coding it in for keyboard only. Only the most basic licensees operated here. If the Conservancy went looking for secrets, this would be the last place they’d check. He two-fingered out a message to Ginger and waited. Interminably. This had to be the slowest method of communications ever devised. The waiting was the most annoying part. But this was the only way she’d communicate with him. The “she” was an assumption on his part. He’d never met Ginger, and considering how long he’d been doing business with her, there was a distinct possibility she wasn’t even a single individual. He’d probably never know. She was so security conscious, she bordered on the paranoid. As he watched his unanswered message flashing on the screen, it dawned on him that perhaps that was why he dealt almost exclusively with her these days. One contact meant only one person could give him up to the Conservancy.
“Acknowledged.” It came onto the screen at last. Ginger used no signature at all.
“Available?” he tapped in.
Seventeen titles and authors came up on the screen. John frowned at the paucity of the selections. He knew they represented only a fraction of the works the Conservancy had decided to delete from the public information banks since he was last in port. If this was all Ginger had managed to salvage, she was either getting lazy or the Conservancy was getting more alert to the pirate salvage trade. As he scanned the prices beside her entries, his heart nearly stopped.
“Gouger,” he muttered. His frown deepened as he reminded himself that he’d better be careful with his funds until he secured a new contract for Evangeline. He set about the painful process of selection, idly noting that Crime and Punishment was on her list. Not to his taste, but … He paused, scowling as he tapped in his selections and received back no reply other than a drop location. He cleared the screen and debated a moment longer. It was stupid to take any kind of chances. But.
He leaned over, opened a standard ship-to-ship channel. “John Gen-93-Beta on the Beastship Evangeline, calling Beastship Trotter.” It was a long shot that Trotter was even in port right now. But a few moments later the answer came.
“Beastship Trotter replying. Jason Gen-99-Pollux-Agri-27 speaking. Your message, sir?”
“Just a personal call, Jason. Have Andrew call me back, will you, on my channel? He knows where I stand by. John Gen-93-Beta, Beastship Evangeline, clear.”
John listened to Jason clear, then shifted over to a quieter frequency. A few minutes passed before he heard Andrew hail him.
“Hey, John, when did you get back in? It’s been a while.”
“Just docking now.” John debated how to phrase his offer. “I wanted to know if you’d have time for a cup of stim and some talk while we’re in port? Because if you do, I think I can arrange a meeting between you and a mutual friend.”
“Who?” Andrew demanded in confusion.
“Fyodor.” John paused. “I know, you remember him as sort of an idiot, but he’s gotten past that now. But if you still consider it a social crime that merits punishment …”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, I do.” Dawning comprehension in Andrew’s voice, and the unmistakable lust and excitement of the collector. “Good old Fyodor. Will he be with you?”
John hesitated. But Andrew would be good for the money. Maybe that would be the best way, to keep Ginger and her dealings private. Besides, if she thought he had told anyone else how to contact her without her prior consent, she’d probably refuse to ever deal with him again. No, better pick it up himself and find a way to get it to Andrew. “Yes, he’ll be with me. I’ll meet you at, oh, just past the security checkpoint, at about 2100. You can take me to dinner, or whatever.”
“Sounds fair. I’ve wanted to talk to you anyway, for some time. Just didn’t expect to catch you in port for a while. Uh, you still have Connie on as crew?”
Was that trepidation in Andrew’s voice? A sudden uneasiness made John more formal. “Yes, she’s still on as crew. I meant to talk to you about that, too.”
“Oh.” John heard Andrew take a breath. “Sounds like you already heard the rumors.”
“Rumors?” John asked coldly.
“Uh, about why she went for Adjustment.”
“She went in for Adjustment?”
“Yeah, that’s the story.” Andrew sounded totally miserable now. “Swear I hadn’t heard about it when I recommended her. Uh, why don’t we leave this for dinner, okay?”
“Sounds like we’d better,” John replied. Already he was regretting his generous impulse toward Andrew. “Let’s clear this channel, and I’ll see you after I dock, okay? I got a few things to set up.”
“Right, John. See you then.” As John switched back to the hobby channel and Ginger, he wondered just what Andrew had to tell him.
“Penny for your thoughts, my dear?”
Connie jumped, and only her harness kept her from clearing out of her lounge. It took her a moment to realize it was Tug who had spoken. He did such bizarre things with his voice synthesis. Some of it seemed to be imitations of accents or well-known voices, but she didn’t recognize most of them. And his use of antique idiom seemed expressly for the purpose of irritating John. This, at least, was an expression she recognized.
“I wasn’t really thinking, Tug. Just staring I guess, and daydreaming.”
“Already making shore plans?”
“Not really,” she replied, and realized suddenly this was true. Her plans consisted mostly of what she wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t look up old friends; she wouldn’t go to places she had once frequented; she wasn’t even going to check in at the Mariners’ Hall to see who else was in port. So what was she going to do? Just drift through the corridors, she supposed. See what was new in portable entertainment. Maybe get a massage, just for the body contact. She toyed with the idea of sex, but easily dismissed it. Masturbation sufficed. She didn’t even need that as often as they had taught her was healthy. But a massage would feel good, Human hands against her skin, manipulating her muscles. It had been part of her therapy during Readjustment; the only part she had enjoyed, and the only part of her shore-side regimen she was still faithful to. But none of this was anything to share with Tug. Arthroplanas were generally disinterested in the personal aspect of Humans’ lives, and even if Tug were interested, she wasn’t ready for the owner of the Evangeline to know that much about her.
“You are silent, again.” Tug made it sound like a rebuke.
“Just keeping an eye on our approach.” She tried to sound professional.
“Evangeline is doing that as she always does. Despite John’s command, you need not be concerned about it. He was merely being, as I commented before, a prick.”
Connie wiped sweaty hands down her uniform trousers. To have something to do, she switched the image on her screen. Now instead of Delta Station, she saw Evangeline. She had heard it said that no two Beastships were alike; looking at Evangeline, she could believe it. It wasn’t just that each Beast was the product of its diet. It seemed to Connie that some sort of intent entered into it. Trotter, the first ship she had ever crewed on, had been spiky and forbidding. Trotter had looked like some sinister weapon set adrift in space. His constantly rippling spikes had always looked threatening to her. But Evangeline was all crystal delicacy and airy beauty. Connie compared the graceful swaying of her trailing spinnerets to the blocky functionality of Delta Station. There were myths that some Beastships actually used those long filaments as some sort of weaving device to extrude fine threads that became nets or webs, and that the Beasts laid their eggs on those nets and set them adrift to snare mineral food for their hatching offspring.
Connie considered it all a pretty fancy. No one had any idea how the Beastships reproduced, or could even prove that they did. Still, to look at Evangeline made one wish that there could be others with her airy grace.
“Oh, she doth teach the beacons to shine bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich gem upon a black-skinned ear. Beauty too rich for use, for Humans too dear …”
Tug paused, waiting.
It took Connie a moment to realize Tug was quoting something at her. Probably old Earth poetry. John had mentioned something about Tug being interested in the Humanities. She shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t recognize it. The ancient literatures are John’s interest, not mine. I don’t even know if you’ve got it right.”
“It’s by a Human called William Shakespeare. And I’ve got it right, although John would disagree and fume and fret. He loses sight of the need for poetry to be contemporized in order for it to retain its beauty and its sense. Who is your favorite poet?”
“I don’t think I have one.” Connie kept her eyes on the gentle wafting of Evangeline’s draperies and lines.
“Well, we shall have to remedy that. I’ve made a study of Human literature, although John despises my abilities and infers that one must be Human to appreciate the Human creations. It is, of course, only his jealousy because I excel him. But as a Human, you should have some appreciation for the works of your race. I shall instruct you on our next trip.”
“Oh, really, I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself.” Connie demurred. There was a terrible sinking in her belly, the feeling that somehow she had just stepped out into a void. She didn’t want Tug trying to get close. It was easier not to have friends than to deal with the questions and misunderstandings that always arose among them. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she had become a Mariner, and the reason why she had slept so much this last trip? She couldn’t let Tug spoil her fresh start.
“I would be no trouble,” Tug began, but she dared to interrupt.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t ask it of you. Besides, you would soon find I had no aptitude for it at all. It was one of my lowest scores on the options test. I gave up trying to understand contemporary poetry or literature long ago.”
“We’ll see, shall we?” Tug suggested with such firmness that Connie grudgingly nodded. She was unsure as to how much authority the Arthroplana had over her. John was the captain, and theoretically the final authority over Humans on the ship. But Tug was the owner. Could he fire her? Could he report her as uncooperative, even maladjusted? The coldness squeezed up from the pit of her stomach. Don’t take a chance.
“Actually, it might be interesting to discuss Human creations with an Arthroplana. Perhaps a new viewpoint is what I need in order to enjoy them.”
“A delightful opinion! One that John, unfortunately, does not share. Which makes him most intractable about doing simple favors for me, when they involve Human literature, but perhaps you would be more helpful?”
This doesn’t sound good, Connie warned herself. Go carefully. “I’d like to be helpful,” Connie forced herself to say.
“Marvelous. It’s a simple favor, I assure you. I am in contact with certain collectors and enthusiasts on Delta Station. They have for me fresh copies of some very old Human literature. Copies which they say are remarkably intact and close to the originals; almost free of that annoying biotech drift that infects material stored too long on biodegradable media. And they’re offering it at quite reasonable prices. I can authorize your use of my station funds. It’s merely a matter of having you pick up the copies for me and bring them back to the ship.”
“Copies? From collectors?” Connie asked dubiously. Didn’t he realize what he was asking was unthinkable?
“Of course,” Tug assured her. “I told you it was a simple favor. All I need is for you to go and pick …”
“Couldn’t you just access from the public banks?”
Tug sounded disgruntled. “I suppose I could, on a very temporary basis. For whatever paltry number of hours we’re to be in port this time. A totally insufficient way to do research in depth.”
“But I thought Beastships were allowed to save from the public information banks onto the ship’s banks, because we’re away so long.” Connie didn’t just think this; she knew it. Every Beastship was allotted library space and privilege according to crew population.
“That? Our ship’s allotment was filled long ago. John’s reading habits and my needs for reference materials for my great work demand a vast amount of material. Unfortunately, having filled our legal allotment, neither John nor I can agree on what volumes can be dispensed with from our limited space to allow us to copy other material. And the Conservancy will allot us no additional space. It’s a very frustrating situation, especially as the Conservancy continues to delete books and information as they become Irrelevant or Outdated or Unnecessary. That’s by their standards, of course, not mine. As a scholar of your Humanities …”
“Information hoarding is no better than any other kind of hoarding,” Connie informed him, almost prudishly. The words came out automatically, like a conditioned response. My Readjustment? she wondered, but went on anyway. “Private collections of outdated information, especially fictional work, can have no benefit to our worlds, and only encourage consumer excesses, artificial values, and economic speculation, and …”
“Pish-tush, my dear. You forget to whom you’re speaking. As if I would ask for anything improper or disharmonious! Were we talking of ordinary Humans indulging in a mania for possession, I would concede your fundamental correctness. But we are speaking of myself, an Arthroplana. My life span lasts a multitude of yours, and my study of the Humanities will truly transcend time only if I have full access to the entire historical spectrum of Human creativity. I am sure the Conservancy would recognize my need were I to petition them. But until I have time to do so, I take my own small shortcuts. They needn’t concern you. Consider this: the material I bring aboard is then copied onto organic memory filament secreted by the Beast for precisely such a purpose, and the original medium is then biologically degraded with a thoroughness your technology can never hope of achieving. No one suffers, least of all the environment. I am surprised that I need tell you this. Another Arthroplana might actually be offended that you would even consider that one of our race might deliberately choose to do something that was not totally harmonious with the natural environment.” His tone had become progressively colder and more formal.
“I didn’t mean,” Connie began, flustered. She felt chilled, almost threatened by his words. She’d never been lectured by an Arthroplana, let alone scolded like a child with poor manners.
“You are, of course, quite young,” Tug conceded generously. “Even by Human standards, your experience is quite limited. So I forgive you, as is more divine than Human. This time. I don’t think I even need mention it to John.”
“Thank you,” she managed numbly, wondering if she weren’t missing half the conversation.
“Don’t mention it. It’s no trouble. Now, the information I need you to pick up for me should be available within an hour of our docking. Of course, I don’t need it quite that fast. My supplier will be waiting for your visit, and …”
The communication station beeped an alert. “Delta Station to Beastship Evangeline. Dock at Gate Ten for unloading, please.”
“Affirmed,” Connie replied, knowing it was only a formality. Tug would already have relayed the message to Evangeline, and she would already be responding even as Connie answered.
“We’ll talk of this again, later,” Tug said quickly, and surely it was only Connie’s nervousness that made his synthesized voice sound hurried and furtive. Tug switched intercoms abruptly. “Captain John Gen-93-Beta!” His voice rang out throughout all levels. “We’re docking. Your ship has come in!” The heartiness in his voice almost sounded real. “Best come chat with the docking crew while Evangeline and I perform the docking.”
Within his quarters deep inside Evangeline’s body, Tug hunkered into position. Tiny anterior hooks secured him in position within his host. He drew his shortened forelimbs carefully down a nerve trunk. When the ganglion bundle bulged, he darted in to lock minds with her again.
[Docking with Delta again.]
“Yes. Pay attention to the frequency emanations so you line up correctly.”
[I do. Evangeline will have Beast time?]
“Perhaps. Line up correctly.”
[I do. Evangeline would like a mating.]
A mating? Tug decided it wouldn’t fit into the schedule. He matched one of his modified nematocysts carefully to one of Evangeline’s nerve centers and expertly discharged it. So much for that impulse. He monitored her, felt her interest in mating fade as the inhibitor took effect. Docility returned to the Beastship.
[Docking with Delta Station. Tug will play a game with Evangeline?]
“Later. If Evangeline docks well, and does not complain about the unloading, then Tug will play a game. Pay attention to the frequency emanations and line up to match them. Then you will dock well.”
[Evangeline pays attention. Docking with Delta Station.]
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Megan Lindholm
A classic science fiction adventure from the backlist of Megan Lindholm, who also writes as Robin Hobb.Generations ago humanity abandoned Earth. Now they have returned.Far from home, the Human race tries to atone for killing Terra thousands of years ago. Rescued by the enigmatic Arthroplana in their mysterious Beastships, they have been inserted into the fragile ecologies of the alien twin worlds of Castor and Pollux, where they must make no impact, where every drop of water must be returned. Humanity has adjusted – or tried to.Despite the constant watch of the Arthroplana and the Human Conservancy, John Gen-93-Beta has agreed to captain the Beastship Evangeline on an unthinkable journey to a dead planet… Earth.And so begins an engrossing voyage of discovery for five travellers: John, his First Mate Connie, stowaaway Raef, Tug the Arthroplana and the Beastship Evangeline herself. On a planet none quite expected, each learns the power of being human.
Voyager
Megan Lindholm
Alien Earth
Contents
Cover (#ulink_f5f5fa29-aacc-5042-94c9-c478a228b89b)
Title Page
Prologue
The table was cold and hard under his back. Metal.
1
“I HATE THESE DAMN SCREENS.”
2
IN COMPARISON TO the quiet of Evangeline’s gondola, the corridors…
3
SHE WAS WALKING TOO FAST. Connie consciously slowed her stride…
4
TUG FINISHED THE SEARCH of his archives. He signaled Evangeline…
5
“TOOK ONE A PIECE and left three in it.” He…
6
“CONNIE.”
7
RAEF STIRRED DROWSILY; his hands touched the unwet slickness of…
8
“BY THE WAY, Talbot is dead.”
9
“AWAKE, SWEET PRINCE.” Saccharine sarcasm. Tug must have been practicing…
10
“SO,” TUG FINISHED, “our point-by-point comparison demonstrates that Nero Wolfe…
11
JOHN STARED AT THE SCREEN. He was five days into…
12
SUMMONED. He wanted her to … chocolate. Brown, thick, sweet…
13
SHE LIFTED THE HAND she’d had clamped over her own…
14
BOREDOM. Tug’s anxiety had finally given way to an all-consuming…
15
“TUG!”
16
“IT’S GOING TO BE hot today.”
17
SUN ON HER SHOULDERS and the top of her head…
18
[/ / / / /]
19
EVANGELINE WAS SO CLOSE, she had become the horizon, a…
20
SHE HAD LEFT RAEF ALONE, with his own thoughts. It…
About the Author
Other Books by Megan Lindholm
Copyright
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PROLOGUE
The table was cold and hard under his back. Metal. Shiny stainless steel. And he was naked, save for a blue-paper hospital gown that came but halfway down his thighs. A mocking little cushion of papery tissue under his head pretended to be a pillow for his comfort. The temporary curtain-walls of the examining cubicle were made of the same papery stuff. He wanted to sit up to try to wrap the inadequate garment around him, but he didn’t dare. He was afraid it would be the wrong thing to do, that somehow it would disqualify him. All he had to do now was wait. Surely he could wait a little longer. The physical examination of his external body had gone well. All that remained now was for the lab to okay his blood and urine and stool specimens. All that remained was for the lab to find him free of drug residues, alcohol, internal and external parasites, contagious diseases, genetically carried diseases or tendencies to diseases, fungi and harmful bacteria, and anything else the Conservancy for Humankind deemed undesirable. Somehow it seemed that if he lay very still on the cold steel table, it would make it easier for them to find him pure and whole, and suitable to be a colonist. Then he could disembark from the Beastship Evangeline, and enter Station Alpha, the first step in becoming acculturated to the new ecology. He reminded himself that he had passed just such a battery of tests before being allowed to join those evacuating from Earth. This was probably just a formality, a confirmation of what the Earth team had found so many years ago. Raef pressed himself against the cold table and tried to breathe.
“Not real.” Raef tried desperately to make his lips move, to force out sounds he could hear, that would wake himself. “This isn’t real. This isn’t here, this isn’t now. Here and now, I am dreaming in a Waitsleep womb inside the Beastship Evangeline, as I have been for hundreds of years and as I will for hundreds of years to come. This isn’t real. It isn’t happening and it can’t hurt me now.”
Usually he could control the dreams. Usually he could dream what he wanted, when he wanted. The best was when he could just let himself go and sink deeper and deeper, down to where the dreams were realer than real. And better than real, too, because he could make them come out the way he wanted them to. But sometimes, once in a great while, this happened, and he got stuck. Tug gave some command to Evangeline, and in turn the great Beast adjusted Raef’s metabolism, and he got caught like this, in between, dreaming uncontrollably, and all the dreams his worst old memories.
The room was chilly, too. His bare feet were cold. He lifted his head and stared at them. How pale and uncallused they had become through the long years of existing in Waitsleep inside a womb. They reminded him of a baby’s feet, pink and wrinkled and unused. The long periods of Waitsleep did that; it could slow down an organism’s functioning, but not stop it entirely. Growth and the replacement of cells, skin cells for instance, continued. During the brief Wakeups on the ship, he had crawled from the womb, endured a cursory physical inspection by a medical team that had themselves only been awake a few hours longer than their wards. Then with the other awakened colonists, he had oiled his body and rubbed away the peeling dead skin from his hide to expose his new pink skin, had eaten a simple meal, and run in a hamster wheel to try to exercise his body against the lassitude of weightlessness. For a week or so, there had been the idle talk of other people to endure, endless speculation on what the new planets, Castor and Pollux, would be like. Interspersed with that would be the boredom of the required ecology lectures and indoctrinations into the ideals of the Conservancy, all canned stuff on video. And sometimes, whispered conversation about the Arthroplana and their strange Beastships, and why they had come to rescue the Humans from the dying Earth. And for Raef alone, when he could no longer stand the jostling companionship of the many others who shared his Wakeup times, or when the canned lectures became too didactic, there had been the exhilaration of sneaking away from the carefully orchestrated group activities and exploring the ship’s labyrinthine structure.
But not too often, for such free-spirited violations of the rules were not regarded lightly. It would be a damn shame to come this far, and then become regarded as a rebel, a maverick, someone who couldn’t be a team player. He’d seen it happen to a few; they refused the discipline of the organized Wakeup times, or challenged the information and philosophy of the lectures. They probably thought it made them look smarter than people like Raef who agreed with everything and always acted just like everyone else. Fools. Really smart people stayed away from them.
Raef remembered one man well because of his trembling paranoia. James, his name had been. And they had sat at a table during the recreation hour, aimlessly playing at checkers on a magnetic board. Raef had beaten him the last six times in a row. During the last Wakeup, Raef had beaten him every time they played. It was a new experience for Raef, who had seldom won at games before. He had just decided that it was boring when James skittered a checker across two squares and then declared hoarsely, “Know what, kid? I don’t think we’re ever going to get there.”
“What?” Raef had said, jarred out of both game and boredom.
“I don’t think we’re really going anywhere. I mean, think about it. These Arthroplana things, they come to Earth in their Beastships, but they never land. They tell us Earth is going to hell in a handcart, no one’s gonna survive, and we only have two, maybe three hundred years to get off the planet. If any Humans are gonna survive, we gotta start leaving now. But no one ever gets to see an Arthroplana, and no one knows where the hell these two planets are they’re offering to take us to. But they go, in our grandparents’ time, and in our parents’ childhood. And then they’re back for another load, and this time we, you and I, we get on. But how do we know they ever got there, the ones that went ahead of us? How do we know they aren’t just taking us out in space and dumping us, killing us off so they can have our planet for themselves? How do we know that?”
People at other tables had turned to look at them. They had listened to James rave with faces either full of pity or disbelief. Perhaps a few showed signs of alarm, but surely it was only at James’s distress, not at a sudden suspicion his words might be true. Now the gazes shifted to Raef at James’s questions, waited for his answer, as if he knew something, as if he were supposed to speak for all those who had faith in the evacuation, who believed that a tomorrow awaited them on distant twin planets spinning around a different sun.
“Well,” he had said, and faltered, wondering. How did they know? Maybe the Arthroplana had picked out the best and strongest to take into space and kill, leaving the weak and sick and elderly to die out on their own on a planet that no longer cherished life. “Well,” he had groped, “there’s the videos we have to watch. About living harmoniously with our new ecology. Someone had to make those. And, well, if they were going to kill us, why aren’t we already dead? Why bring us so far before doing it?”
“So far?” James laughed again, a laugh that cracked suddenly. “How do you know we’re far at all? No one can see out. We’re in the belly of the Beast. How do you know it’s been so long? They say we’ve slept for years, for decades. Maybe it’s only been a single night of drugged sleep. How can we tell anything for ourselves?” James lowered his voice suddenly, and those not already clustered around the table drew closer to hear. “How do we know we aren’t dead already? How do we know this isn’t hell?”
“Well … because …” Raef groped, and then the omnipresent voice of Tug, the Arthroplana that controlled their Beastship and announced all their hours for them, proclaimed, “Wakeup Period Twenty-seven is now drawing to a close. Please void your bladders and empty your bowels before returning to your wombs. If assistance is needed with your umbilical coupler, inform the monitor in your womb chamber. Thank you.”
Raef was glad to unclip his safety harness and kick free of the table, leaving James to put the checkers and board away. He followed the stream of people leaving the rec chamber, to merge in the hallway with other people en route to the lavatories and then on to their womb chambers, to crawl inside and couple up to their life-support tubes and then to drift back into sleep. Now that Raef considered it, he didn’t remember ever seeing James at any of the subsequent Wakeups. What had ever happened to James?
“Get out of there. Get out of there. Get out of there.” Raef ground out the words, trying to feel his teeth grit, his lips move as he begged his dream self to escape from the examining room. It was like an out-of-body experience as he looked down on himself, naked and vulnerable on the table, and yet was himself, waiting anxiously for the screening team’s return.
He had to use a bathroom. After all the urine samples and blood he’d given to them, it seemed incredible that there were any liquids left in his body, but he had to piss soon or he was going to explode. The more he tried to lie still and ignore it, the more threatening the pressure in his bladder became. Had to go. Well, maybe if he was quick about it, he could be back in the examination cubicle before they came back.
He rolled off the table, caught at a rung to still himself, and then tried to grip his paper gown closed behind him. It turned out he had a choice; holding the gown closed, or coping with low-G movement.
“Get out of there, damn it all, get out of there,” Raef whimpered in his sleep. The small comfort of telling himself it was just a dream-remembrance was fast slipping away. If he was caught, it was all over.
He knew the layout of the ship well from his unauthorized explorations. Lavatory was just three chambers from here, once he left the row of curtained alcoves they’d set up in the rec chamber for these final screenings. He was just leaving the chamber when he heard the screening team returning by the other entrance. He would never know what made him pause instead of immediately hastening back to his table, nor what trick of the acoustics carried the incredulous whisper to his ears.
“You’re shitting me! Cancer? How the hell could they have missed that at boarding?”
“Very small tumor, I guess. But it’s been growing while he was in Waitsleep. Big enough to detect now. Shut the hell up.”
“Okay, okay. Which one was it?”
“Raefferty, Terrence. He’s …”
But Raef was moving down the corridor, running breathlessly along before even they could finish speaking his name. He felt shock, not at hearing it, but at finding that he was not surprised by it. There had been a chance, he had always known there had been a chance. His mom had died of it, and his grandfather. He hadn’t told them that at the preboarding exam. He’d know they’d say it constituted a genetic tendency toward the disease. They’d have refused him.
It wasn’t fair, it was never fair to him. This shit was always happening to him, and he never deserved any of it. But he’d be punished for it just the same, just as always. Someday he’d make them all see how unfair it was, how none of it had been his fault.
But for now, he fled, mindlessly, brachiating down the corridor rungs faster than Tarzan of the Apes could have gone. His paper gown fluttered in the wind of his passage, marking him as strange, and he deliberately took every turning that would carry him away from the normally trafficked areas of the ship. There would be a search, he knew. Eventually, they’d find him. So why not stop now, go back, get it over with?
Because.
It was all too familiar, this sensation of fleeing, and the hasty reconstruction of himself as someone else, as Tarzan or Peter Pan or Mega Man or Long John Silver. It used to be the big boys on the playground, chasing him with ready fists and boots. Now it was a lab team in white coats. It was all the same. If he was caught, they would hurt him. And there’d be no one to make them stop.
He fled on, leaving the bright corridors for dimmer ones that branched out into areas of the ship already emptied of sleeping passengers. Womb chamber after womb chamber he passed, until their multitude almost dizzied him. And then ahead of him, the unused corridors were dark, and he fled into them, relying on the consistent spacing of the rungs to let him proceed. On he fled, heart hammering and his mouth so dry he thought his throat would crack. On, until a sudden cramp in his side made him miss his grip and sent him flying into the resilient corridor wall. He rebounded into dark emptiness and settled very slowly to the floor. Raef lay still, half stunned, clutching at the cramp in his side. Little by little the pain receded and even his breathing steadied. He caught his breath, swallowed in a dry throat, and sat up cautiously. He looked back the way he thought he had come. Blackness. Ahead was the same.
He tried to keep calm, tried to assess his situation. What would they do? He wasn’t sure. But he knew what they wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t let him leave the Beastship and become a colonists on a new planet. It didn’t seem likely to him that they’d send him back to Earth. A stray phrase from the Conservancy lectures came back to him. “Pity for the deformed and diseased swiftly devolves into a form of cruelty. Extending the lives of the unfit is not a worthwhile pursuit for Humanity. The strengthening of our species is.” The lecture had been explaining the need for rigorous controls on breeding once the planets were reached, but he didn’t doubt that the same policy would extend to him.
Raef gathered himself to this feet. For a few moments he felt about in the darkness for a rung, before his arm muscles cramped and he realized he couldn’t rung any farther. He stood a moment longer, darkness and silence pressing him as heavily as the knowledge of his disease, the imperfection that would let them kill him.
“Help me!” He spoke it aloud to the darkness, hopelessly. “God, help me!”
“What do you require?”
It was either the voice of God, or the voice of Tug himself, the one that had dictated all their awakenings and sleepings all this long way. It didn’t seem to Raef that it mattered which. It asked him what he needed as if it could grant it.
“Sanctuary,” he begged.
“Sanctuary?”
“They’ll kill me if they find me. Because I have …”
“I know. But you still want to live?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t be much of a life.”
“It will be better than death.”
“Interesting.” The voice sounded intrigued. “This way.”
The corridor lit dimly before him. He followed the light, glancing back once to see it fading behind him. It led him far, winding deeper and deeper into the ship, and finally to a womb chamber, where wombs hung slackly grey, waiting.
“Enter one,” said the voice. “You’ll be safe here.”
Raef didn’t hesitate, but crawled into a womb, discarding his paper gown on the way. He groped and found the umbilical cord, coupled it to the fitting still implanted in his belly. He curled himself for Waitsleep.
“What will you have?” the voice asked, muffled by the walls of the womb. “Without the companionship of other Humans, without a hope of a home, with no future save what you have this minute? What will you have worth living for?”
“The only things I’ve ever had,” Raef muttered. “My dreams.”
He could feel his heart beating, beating too fast, dammit, Tug, don’t you notice my heart is going too fast? The dreams merged, touching until he couldn’t tell them from now, that curling into Waitsleep from this sinking away from the too-vivid dream memory. Finally, he escaped the old nightmare the only way he could, by retreating into a deeper dream.
Long John Silver stands on the deck of his ship, the wind is in his face. Above his head, the sails crack and the crew bustles up the lines to carry out his orders. For on this ship, he is no stowaway, but is the captain, and one word from him can set a lash to a man’s back, or gift him an extra ration of grog….
1
“I HATE THESE DAMN SCREENS.”
Tug didn’t reply to John’s complaint. Neither did Connie, but at least John had the satisfaction of seeing her hunch a little tighter into her own station, nervously aware of the captain’s frustration and displeasure. He glared at the bank of monitors. Runny images. Another one of the Conservancy’s negative improvements. He rubbed again at the biotrol strip that was supposed to stimulate the screens to greater brightness. Nothing happened.
“What’s the matter with the monitor bank?” he demanded, and when he got no reply, he raised his voice in sarcastic incredulity. “Is it biodegrading right before my very eyes?”
Still no answer. Connie’s solution to any problem was to shut up and make herself small until someone else handled it. This was the deckhand’s second ship-out on Evangeline, and John still hadn’t figured out how to get her to react in a constructive way. In her own way, she was as frustrating to him as the dimming monitors. He didn’t understand it. Her papers were good, her scores for her ratings exemplary. Even John’s personal sources had given good reports of her. Or had they? He frowned, remembering Andrew’s words.
“Quiet.” First Mate Andrew on the Beastship Trotter had characterized Connie when John had requested a very unauthorized personal opinion of Andrew’s former shipmate. “Not unfriendly, but quiet. I didn’t know her that well. But from what everyone says, she’s supposed to be very bright. Very competent. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in her. I know you like your privacy, John. Well, so does she. Should work out well, you two hermits rattling around in a scow that size. You can come out of Waitsleep, grunt at each other, and go back in without bothering each other at all.”
So John had hired her, more on Andrew’s word than on her high ratings on the standardized tests. And found her not competent or bright, but only quiet. Very quiet. And passive to the point where it was driving him crazy. Needling her only seemed to make the crewwoman more reclusive, and yet there were times he could not resist doing it, just for the sake of getting some kind of reaction from her. She seemed to have all the personality and social skills of an algae vat. Thanks a lot, Andrew. I owe you one.
As for Tug’s silence, well, the Arthroplana was playing at protocol again. Speak when spoken to. John hated it, but gave in and addressed him by name. “Tug. Can you boost the monitor screen from your side or something? Something’s got to be malfunctioning; nothing this fuzzy could have met standards. I don’t remember the monitor images being this bad last time we used them.” That, of course, had been a number of years and several Wakeups ago. Still, the ship’s equipment wasn’t supposed to biodegrade that fast.
The picture improved minimally as Tug made whatever adjustments he could from his separate living quarters within Evangeline’s body. Tug’s synthetic voice thrummed softly through the command chamber. “My readings indicate that the picture is within the parameters for acceptable vision. It has, as you noted, biodegraded somewhat since our last use of the equipment. The bacterial action that triggers the luminors may be slowing. If you are so dissatisfied with it, I suggest you might have the unit recolonized while we’re docked at Delta. Still, according to all my references, the image is within safe and acceptable parameters.”
“Safe and acceptable parameters? Tug, don’t try to tell me that this image is as good as the one we got on the old equipment that they made us turn in for this.”
Tug considered a moment. “While the image may not be as sharp nor as adjustable, the equipment is much more harmonious with the environment. All components are completely recyclable with a waste factor of less than point two percent.”
“Wonderful. We can’t see a damn thing on the screen, but we can be content knowing that the whole thing can be remanufactured into something even less useful with a minimum of waste.”
Tug either couldn’t think of a reply or chose not to. John crossed his arms on his chest and settled back into his couch. Despite his resolutions, the true source of his frustration pushed itself to the front of his mind again. It had been the first message up on his screen when he’d come out of Waitsleep. Norwich Shipping thanked John, Tug, crew, and the Evangeline herself for their years of service, but were regretful to inform him that such services were no longer required. References would be furnished, of course. Brief and to the point. And totally maddening in that John could think of no reason why they would want to terminate their contract with the Evangeline. She was the only Beastship around that was still unmodified from the old Lifeboat days. No one else had their cargo capacity. They’d never missed a deadline or screwed up a delivery. It made no sense at all, and it promised to turn what should have been a relaxing shore time into a maze of negotiations as John hunted down new clients for the Evangeline. Dammit, it made no sense.
He wanted to stew on Norwich Shipping’s sudden refusal to renew their contract, but was distracted by one monitor’s image. It was a station relay of Evangeline approaching the dock. Not even the fuzziness of the degrading biologics could totally obscure the beauty of the Beast that powered his ship. He ignored the functional cell-meld structure of the gondola fastened to Evangeline; that was but the container that housed the Human crew and provided cargo space. It had no intrinsic beauty, only functional practicality. No, it was Evangeline herself—the organic Beast portion of his Beastship—that captivated him. He realized abruptly that he had been staring silently at the screen for several minutes. After all these years, she could still entrance him like that. He snorted at his own sentiment, and shifted his gaze to another monitor.
It showed him Delta Station. He’d grown up on Beta Station, which was identical to Delta and the other two dirty-tech stations that orbited Castor. It made for maximum efficiency in manufacturing components and maintaining the stations. Maximum boredom, too. He knew every seam and span in the construction of the stations from his days as a maintenance shuttle pilot. It had been thirty-seven years for the station dwellers since he had last been here, but it looked to him as if only his subjective three months had passed; if the Conservancy had made any changes in Delta, they weren’t readily apparent. Just looking at the unimaginative functionality of the station crumpled the moment of peace he’d felt in watching Evangeline’s organic opulence and renewed his earlier discontentment. The exterior of the station mirrored too accurately the blandly efficient interior of the station, of all the stations, even of his own ship.
Well, in a short time he’d be plunged into that grindingly efficient and correct place. It had been bad enough when all that meant was off-loading a cargo and picking up a new consignment. At least then he’d been free to follow his own interests, which usually meant spending the bulk of his pay on information and entertainments for his library. But this time it meant work, and real work, lining up a new client for Evangeline’s services. Reflecting that this type of task was one of the major reasons a Human captain was required at all on Evangeline didn’t cheer him. Tug was too fond of reminding him, “You are the captain of the ship, John, but I control the Beast.”
He glanced once more at the monitor that showed Evangeline’s approach. John fought it for an instant, then let his heart swell as it always did when confronted with the wonder of his ship. Dammit, she was his ship, just as much as Tug’s. She was more than that, she was his world. He’d spent the vast majority of his many years within her, and that, as much as anything, made her his. And he was glad. The Beastship Evangeline moved as lightly as he imagined thistledown had in Terra’s winds. He sometimes thought that perhaps his ship looked like thistledown, on a cosmic scale. The immensity of the cell-meld-constructed gondola fastened to her body was negated to insignificance by the delicacy of her lacy sails and fans and the angel-hair finery of her lines and filaments. The precise angles and functionality of the gondola that hugged Evangeline’s lower body and provided quarters for her Human crew was like a rectangular scar in that forest of delicacy. John jockeyed the monitor controls and shifted to a camera view that didn’t include the gondola. Now she was all Beast, all living creature moving herself easily toward the station. Evangeline was lifting and rotating her filaments and fans in the graceful lazing movement that all Beastships made, no matter what speed they were traveling at. Not for the first time, John stared at that seemingly idle shifting, at the play of the station’s reflected lights on her translucent body, and wondered how the hell the Beasts moved through space so effortlessly. One hank of filaments moved suddenly and coordinatedly in what could have been a venting of gases, a steerage correction, or simply a stretching of tissue as Evangeline brought them closer to docking.
“Tug,” he said softly, staring at the screen. “Tell her she’s beautiful.”
“Tell whom, John?”
He didn’t lift his gaze. “Evangeline. Tell her she’s beautiful.”
“I can’t do that, John. For one thing, she wouldn’t understand it. For another, we have found that any kind of communication with Humans, however indirect, is most unsettling to a Beast. Your culture is still, unfortunately, much too disharmonious.”
“Telling her she’s beautiful would upset her? What’s disharmonious about that?”
Tug sighed audibly, purely for the benefit of the listening Humans. John was suddenly aware of how still Connie was, how tuned in she was to this old argument between Tug and him.
“John, it is so simple. Think about it and even you will grasp it. Evangeline sees neither beauty nor ugliness, in herself or in anything else. She sees only things in their correct places, doing as they should. To speak of beauty to her would be to imply to her that this was a thing to strive for, somehow, at the expense of being harmonious with all around her. It would confuse her.”
John was silent. Tug wasn’t going to give Evangeline the message, was never going to let John have any kind of communication with the Beast that powered his ship. No, Tug kept it all for himself, and John often felt little more than an errand boy.
Sometimes, when he thought about it, it almost made him bitter. John Gen-93-Beta, captain of the Beastship Evangeline, sitting in his command lounge watching his ship rendezvous and dock with the station. And he didn’t lift a finger to control or assist it in any way, didn’t need to issue a single command, didn’t even really understand how any of it was done. The fact that the entire Human populations of Castor and Pollux and all four dirty-tech stations shared his ignorance did nothing to abate his frustration with it. The poor quality of the screen’s image only rubbed his nose in it. It didn’t matter what the Human captain saw, as long as the Arthroplana who owned her, and the Beastship herself, could perceive the correct docking coordinates. They were the ones doing all the real work. John had been more of a real captain when he had been operating one of the little scooters that performed duty maintenance on the exterior of the stations. On board the Evangeline, seated on the bridge, he was captain only of the gondola ship attached to Evangeline’s body. He did not navigate, he did not stand a watch. He was more of a social interface than anything else: a portable component of the ship that Tug could send forth to negotiate contracts, to make physical contact with Humans and other aliens, to supervise loading and unloading of any tangible cargoes they might carry. He thought of the years he had struggled to reach this position, the machinations he’d gone through, and felt his gut tighten. And yet he wouldn’t change what he had for anything else. Because it was as close as any Human could come to mastering an interstellar Beastship. As close as the Arthroplana would ever let a Human approach the freedom of the spaceways. He didn’t know any other Beastship captain who didn’t feel the same frustration with the biologically imposed ceiling on ambition. He’d reached the pinnacle of his career, but his fingertips would only brush mankind’s ambition to roam the stars.
He spared a glance for Connie, the only other Human inhabitant on the Evangeline. She was the crew, as he was the captain. Tug was the owner, and Evangeline herself was no one knew what. According to Tug and the other Arthroplanas who owned them, the Beastships were alive and almost sentient. And horribly sensitive to being peeked and probed at, which was why despite their two-thousand-year acquaintanceship, no Humans had ever been allowed more than the most cursory of inspections of one. No Human understood the mechanisms by which a Beastship fed or communicated with another Beast or with the Arthroplana within its body, let alone how they achieved light speed. When questioned by Humans about the Beastships’ method of locomotion, the Arthroplanas either professed not to understand it either, or retreated into a semantic jungle of words that had no Human equivalent, interspersed with concepts that seemed more philosophical than physical. Their “explanations” served only to give those Humans who specialized in Arthroplana psychology more to argue about among themselves. Once, during one of their quarrels, John had accused Tug and the Arthroplana in general of dissembling with Humanity merely to keep their monopoly on interstellar travel. Tug had laughed, in his most annoying simulated giggle. For ten solid minutes.
He reflected that as captain he still knew little more than the very first Humans who had boarded a Beastship “lifeboat” for the evacuation of Terra. He shifted restlessly, and tried to focus his mind on his more immediate problems.
“Check back with the ship every twelve hours while we’re in port. I don’t think our layover here will be very long. Norwich Shipping has picked up their contract option the last dozen times we’ve been here; I expect they’ll do it again, if I go in and argue with them. If they do, I want to be ready to go. And if they don’t, I want you to be ready to go with whatever I do find for us. But Norwich will be my first effort. I wonder what the hell they want to renegotiate. Probably want to lower the risk bonus again. Same old damn thing. They think because we haven’t had any accidents, there isn’t any danger in these weird runs they find for us. I’d like to see them find someone else who’d be willing to take on one of their little errands.”
John paused and waited for Connie to make some sort of response. He saw her eyes flicker in his direction, then fix on her screen again. Come on, kid, have an opinion about something, will you? He filled in the conversation himself.
“The only reason we don’t have accidents is because we’re good. No one else could handle their business for them as smoothly as we do. They’ll find that out quickly enough. In any case, I want to keep our port time and expenses as small as possible until we know where our next contract’s coming from. If we do get something, I don’t want to be held up waiting for you to report. So check back in, uh, every six hours,” he amended, and watched her.
She looked up from her own screen that was giving her an exciting view of Delta Station’s smelting and refining quadrant. Her brown eyes were huge. The stubble of hair on her scalp was dark and would possibly be curly if she were ever out of Waitsleep long enough to let it grow. John stared at it and wondered idly what she looked like with hair. She was still almost a stranger to him, for all that this was their second trip together. He wondered if she had deliberately set up her waking intervals so they wouldn’t coincide with his. Of course, that would have taken Tug’s collaboration, but he was sure she could get that with no difficulty. Tug routinely suborned crewmen almost as fast as John could hire them. Hell, Tug would probably have suggested it to her. Anything that needled John delighted the Arthroplana. And John reciprocated. He considered replacing Connie just to make Tug wonder why, then shrugged the thought away. It wouldn’t be fair. He’d hired her because Andrew had said she was quiet, competent, and would respect his privacy. Andrew knew that loud, overly friendly people drove him crazy. But Connie didn’t seem to want or need any social interaction at all. Even that he could live with, if he could ever get her to see what needed doing and just do it without waiting for a specific command from him for every separate task. Right now, she was still staring at him. “Every six hours, sir?” she asked uncertainly.
“Yes, six hours,” he replied testily. “Do you have a problem with that?” He waited for her to object that Delta Station was on a standard Terra period of twenty-four hours and that she was technically only required to report to him once each period, but she didn’t She glanced away from him.
“No problem, sir,” she said meekly, and that was that.
John resisted the urge to needle her again. He stared at her deliberately, and watched her hunch herself deeper into her station screen. The standard shipboard smock she wore strained across her wide shoulders. She’d probably been hunching like that ever since she was a child, in an effort to look smaller. It didn’t work. Even the loose uniform trousers were snug on her and too short. She was big, for a woman of her generation, but John would still be bigger than she was when they were both full-grown. After all, he was the ninety-third generation, and she was hundred and third. People had gotten a lot smaller in those ten generations.
His eyes roved the command chamber’s Spartan walls, bare monitors, functional control panels, seeking something, anything, to hang his attention on. But in Conservancy-approved fashion, there was absolutely nothing within the chamber that wasn’t necessary. Every item had an indispensable purpose. He looked at Connie and wondered briefly if that was what irritated him about her: perhaps she had a Conservancy-approved mind, all functionality, all imagination pared away in the interests of efficiency and conservation of resources.
“Connie!” he said, more sharply than he’d intended. She flinched again.
“Yes, sir?”
“Keep an eye on things. I’m going down to my quarters.”
“Yes, sir.”
She didn’t even dare to ask him what she should keep an eye on. Or maybe it never occurred to her to ask. For a moment he thought about asking her exactly what she would watch, but then decided he was too hungry to enjoy prodding at her anymore. If he got any extra time in port, and if the Beastship Trotter was in, too, and if Andrew had any extra time, maybe John could pry a little more out of him. For now, let it go. He had a few personal chores of his own to take care of before they docked. He unhooked from the harness on his lounge and swung clear on a transverse cleat. It felt good to stretch his muscles, and he flung himself out of the command chamber with more force than was necessary. Maybe he was growing, he thought as he made his way through the corridor that led to the gallery. Maybe he was even getting ready to go through the change.
“Prick,” Tug observed.
Connie flinched again. She hated herself for that. She should have been over it by now, should have been used to both John and Tug, and have stopped jumping every time one of them spoke. But John was always so caustic and critical, and Tug was always saying such unexpected things. Like now.
“Repeat, please, Tug,” she requested.
“Prick.” When Connie frowned, he continued helpfully, “Dick. Prod. Sticker.”
The last term she recognized, and giggled nervously.
“All terms for the Human male’s sexual organ,” Tug continued gravely. “And all used to express contempt for a person who receives unusual satisfaction out of being unpleasant when in a position of authority. What do you suppose we can infer about Humans from that?”
Connie shrugged and stared into her screen. She didn’t know what to make of Tug. She had only had direct contact with one other Arthroplana, and that one had never conversed casually with the Human crew, let alone been uncouth enough to criticize the captain. She tried to believe that as long as she didn’t verbally respond to it, she couldn’t be considered a party to it. If John ever overheard it, there would be big trouble for her. It could be construed as mutinous behavior. She frowned, then consoled herself that it was very unlikely John would overhear any of Tug’s comments. Tug was aware of their every movement within the gondola, of the status of every bit of their equipment, and the placement of every piece of freight within the cargo bays. He even monitored them during the time the Humans were actually inside Evangeline herself, in her Waitsleep wombs. He’d have to be supremely negligent to make such remarks in John’s hearing. Or, and she felt her spine tighten, supremely careless of what John felt. Now that was something she could imagine, and it made her mouth go dry.
“Tug,” she said abruptly, trying to sound professional and nothing more, “could you give me a status report, please? How long until we dock, and does the station have the unloading crew ready?”
“Thirty-seven minutes until docking. The unloading crew will stand by in twenty-five minutes. Really, Connie, this is a very routine docking. Although we don’t usually carry the tago-root shipments from Castor, the station receives them for processing about every ten days. It was more or less as a favor to the Beastship Hector that we stopped and picked up this shipment. For the docksiders, it’s just another routine, regular shipment to unload. It’s a very mundane task for them. Simplest sort of cargo run, and thus precisely the kind John hates. He much prefers the type of run that Norwich Shipping comes up with: quick profits from obscure or bizarre cargo, preferably after a very long trip. That’s why he’ll swallow his pride and go into Norwich’s offices and practically beg them to reconsider.”
“And if they don’t?”
She could almost hear the shrug in Tug’s voice. “We’ve already had another offer. Not that John likes it much. It’s an unspecified contract with Earth Affirmed. We made a few runs for them, quite a long time ago, back when John and I first started working together. But I gather that their reputation made John uneasy; politically, they’re quite unpopular with the Conservancy. They’ve tried to rehire us the last few times we’ve been in port, but Norwich always had an option on us. That was enough excuse for John to refuse some excellent offers from them.”
“So you think he’ll refuse them again?”
A synthesized snort. “Hard to say. You see, the only other contract he’s likely to get right now is for something rather mundane and boring, such as ore hauls. But both he and Evangeline have a very low tolerance for repetitious tasks and routine schedules. It’s one reason why I keep John, in spite of all his flaws. He harmonizes very well with Evangeline. He usually manages to get us unusual contracts that involve long-distance hauls and new places. She likes those, and so does he. John can spend the years dreaming in Waitsleep while Evangeline gets to see new places. So, I expect he’ll negotiate with Earth Affirmed rather than take anything stable and normal.” There was a trace of derision in the Arthroplana’s voice.
“I see,” Connie said softly. “Long runs.” She thought of the run they had just completed. She’d come aboard at Delta Station, thirty-seven years ago, newly hired. On the run out to Rabby and on the trip back, she’d chosen the minimum Wakeup routine. For her, a matter of days had passed. But for Delta Station and everyone on it, thirty-seven years had passed. She felt a sinking in her belly as she mused on it. Tug was mercifully silent. Thirty-seven years. The longest she’d ever been gone before had been five years, and she’d taken maximum Wakeups on that trip, so it had seemed like a year’s trip. This time, while she’d slept and then docked at Rabby and supervised the unloading of the Human-manufactured textiles and ceremonial robes that the Rabby Geltehan queen had ordered for her trouba’s rejuvenation ceremonies, and then slept and waked again, thirty-seven years had passed on Delta.
She’d chosen Waitsleep, and she told herself firmly that she didn’t regret it. “Time is a greater distance than space.” So the saying went, and she hoped she’d prove it true. She had seen her generation slowly aging away from her, two and three years at a stretch, until most of them had been twenty-seven years older than she was when she’d last left Delta. But this time, when she got off the ship, they’d be sixty-four years older than she was. They’d be ninety-seven years old now. Sexually mature. Physical adults. They might recognize her if they saw her, but she probably wouldn’t know them. And that was how she had decided she wanted it. Not to know them anymore. Not to have any contemporaries, not to have anyone who came up and looked searchingly into her eyes and complimented her on how much more relaxed she seemed since she’d gone through Readjustment. Too damn many of them had heard about her Readjustment. It would be better to go on with her life, to make new connections and friends, ones that didn’t look curiously at her and wonder just what had been wrong with her to require Readjustment.
John frowned around the cluttered walls of his awake quarters. Dammit, he was running out of room again. He thought he could fit one more restrainer shelf against the bulkhead by his lounge, as long as he always remembered it when he was sitting up. It wouldn’t leave him much head space. But the only other option was eliminating some of his reader tape collection, and he’d long passed the point in his collecting where that was really an option. Sometimes he felt he treasured the minor works of the ancient authors more than the major ones. The major ones stood a chance of survival on their own. The minor ones by the lesser thinkers would survive the Conservancy’s strict policies on information hoarding only in pirate collections like his own.
Once more his eyes roved his cluttered stateroom, so unlike the bare austerity that characterized the rest of Evangeline’s gondola chambers. There were gaps in the shelves that only his eyes could see, gaps that would never be filled: spaces for Kipling’s second Jungle Book, for Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, for the myriad sequels to Dumas’s Three Musketeers, for— He forced himself to stop thinking about everything that had been lost long years before he was born. Instead he cleared the litter from a hasty meal off his workspace, putting the packaging down the recycler and the tray itself through the cleanser.
That done, he seated himself and accessed the communications board from his terminal. He opened a private communications channel on the hobby band usually frequented only by adolescents and oldsters, and increased his security by coding it in for keyboard only. Only the most basic licensees operated here. If the Conservancy went looking for secrets, this would be the last place they’d check. He two-fingered out a message to Ginger and waited. Interminably. This had to be the slowest method of communications ever devised. The waiting was the most annoying part. But this was the only way she’d communicate with him. The “she” was an assumption on his part. He’d never met Ginger, and considering how long he’d been doing business with her, there was a distinct possibility she wasn’t even a single individual. He’d probably never know. She was so security conscious, she bordered on the paranoid. As he watched his unanswered message flashing on the screen, it dawned on him that perhaps that was why he dealt almost exclusively with her these days. One contact meant only one person could give him up to the Conservancy.
“Acknowledged.” It came onto the screen at last. Ginger used no signature at all.
“Available?” he tapped in.
Seventeen titles and authors came up on the screen. John frowned at the paucity of the selections. He knew they represented only a fraction of the works the Conservancy had decided to delete from the public information banks since he was last in port. If this was all Ginger had managed to salvage, she was either getting lazy or the Conservancy was getting more alert to the pirate salvage trade. As he scanned the prices beside her entries, his heart nearly stopped.
“Gouger,” he muttered. His frown deepened as he reminded himself that he’d better be careful with his funds until he secured a new contract for Evangeline. He set about the painful process of selection, idly noting that Crime and Punishment was on her list. Not to his taste, but … He paused, scowling as he tapped in his selections and received back no reply other than a drop location. He cleared the screen and debated a moment longer. It was stupid to take any kind of chances. But.
He leaned over, opened a standard ship-to-ship channel. “John Gen-93-Beta on the Beastship Evangeline, calling Beastship Trotter.” It was a long shot that Trotter was even in port right now. But a few moments later the answer came.
“Beastship Trotter replying. Jason Gen-99-Pollux-Agri-27 speaking. Your message, sir?”
“Just a personal call, Jason. Have Andrew call me back, will you, on my channel? He knows where I stand by. John Gen-93-Beta, Beastship Evangeline, clear.”
John listened to Jason clear, then shifted over to a quieter frequency. A few minutes passed before he heard Andrew hail him.
“Hey, John, when did you get back in? It’s been a while.”
“Just docking now.” John debated how to phrase his offer. “I wanted to know if you’d have time for a cup of stim and some talk while we’re in port? Because if you do, I think I can arrange a meeting between you and a mutual friend.”
“Who?” Andrew demanded in confusion.
“Fyodor.” John paused. “I know, you remember him as sort of an idiot, but he’s gotten past that now. But if you still consider it a social crime that merits punishment …”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, I do.” Dawning comprehension in Andrew’s voice, and the unmistakable lust and excitement of the collector. “Good old Fyodor. Will he be with you?”
John hesitated. But Andrew would be good for the money. Maybe that would be the best way, to keep Ginger and her dealings private. Besides, if she thought he had told anyone else how to contact her without her prior consent, she’d probably refuse to ever deal with him again. No, better pick it up himself and find a way to get it to Andrew. “Yes, he’ll be with me. I’ll meet you at, oh, just past the security checkpoint, at about 2100. You can take me to dinner, or whatever.”
“Sounds fair. I’ve wanted to talk to you anyway, for some time. Just didn’t expect to catch you in port for a while. Uh, you still have Connie on as crew?”
Was that trepidation in Andrew’s voice? A sudden uneasiness made John more formal. “Yes, she’s still on as crew. I meant to talk to you about that, too.”
“Oh.” John heard Andrew take a breath. “Sounds like you already heard the rumors.”
“Rumors?” John asked coldly.
“Uh, about why she went for Adjustment.”
“She went in for Adjustment?”
“Yeah, that’s the story.” Andrew sounded totally miserable now. “Swear I hadn’t heard about it when I recommended her. Uh, why don’t we leave this for dinner, okay?”
“Sounds like we’d better,” John replied. Already he was regretting his generous impulse toward Andrew. “Let’s clear this channel, and I’ll see you after I dock, okay? I got a few things to set up.”
“Right, John. See you then.” As John switched back to the hobby channel and Ginger, he wondered just what Andrew had to tell him.
“Penny for your thoughts, my dear?”
Connie jumped, and only her harness kept her from clearing out of her lounge. It took her a moment to realize it was Tug who had spoken. He did such bizarre things with his voice synthesis. Some of it seemed to be imitations of accents or well-known voices, but she didn’t recognize most of them. And his use of antique idiom seemed expressly for the purpose of irritating John. This, at least, was an expression she recognized.
“I wasn’t really thinking, Tug. Just staring I guess, and daydreaming.”
“Already making shore plans?”
“Not really,” she replied, and realized suddenly this was true. Her plans consisted mostly of what she wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t look up old friends; she wouldn’t go to places she had once frequented; she wasn’t even going to check in at the Mariners’ Hall to see who else was in port. So what was she going to do? Just drift through the corridors, she supposed. See what was new in portable entertainment. Maybe get a massage, just for the body contact. She toyed with the idea of sex, but easily dismissed it. Masturbation sufficed. She didn’t even need that as often as they had taught her was healthy. But a massage would feel good, Human hands against her skin, manipulating her muscles. It had been part of her therapy during Readjustment; the only part she had enjoyed, and the only part of her shore-side regimen she was still faithful to. But none of this was anything to share with Tug. Arthroplanas were generally disinterested in the personal aspect of Humans’ lives, and even if Tug were interested, she wasn’t ready for the owner of the Evangeline to know that much about her.
“You are silent, again.” Tug made it sound like a rebuke.
“Just keeping an eye on our approach.” She tried to sound professional.
“Evangeline is doing that as she always does. Despite John’s command, you need not be concerned about it. He was merely being, as I commented before, a prick.”
Connie wiped sweaty hands down her uniform trousers. To have something to do, she switched the image on her screen. Now instead of Delta Station, she saw Evangeline. She had heard it said that no two Beastships were alike; looking at Evangeline, she could believe it. It wasn’t just that each Beast was the product of its diet. It seemed to Connie that some sort of intent entered into it. Trotter, the first ship she had ever crewed on, had been spiky and forbidding. Trotter had looked like some sinister weapon set adrift in space. His constantly rippling spikes had always looked threatening to her. But Evangeline was all crystal delicacy and airy beauty. Connie compared the graceful swaying of her trailing spinnerets to the blocky functionality of Delta Station. There were myths that some Beastships actually used those long filaments as some sort of weaving device to extrude fine threads that became nets or webs, and that the Beasts laid their eggs on those nets and set them adrift to snare mineral food for their hatching offspring.
Connie considered it all a pretty fancy. No one had any idea how the Beastships reproduced, or could even prove that they did. Still, to look at Evangeline made one wish that there could be others with her airy grace.
“Oh, she doth teach the beacons to shine bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich gem upon a black-skinned ear. Beauty too rich for use, for Humans too dear …”
Tug paused, waiting.
It took Connie a moment to realize Tug was quoting something at her. Probably old Earth poetry. John had mentioned something about Tug being interested in the Humanities. She shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t recognize it. The ancient literatures are John’s interest, not mine. I don’t even know if you’ve got it right.”
“It’s by a Human called William Shakespeare. And I’ve got it right, although John would disagree and fume and fret. He loses sight of the need for poetry to be contemporized in order for it to retain its beauty and its sense. Who is your favorite poet?”
“I don’t think I have one.” Connie kept her eyes on the gentle wafting of Evangeline’s draperies and lines.
“Well, we shall have to remedy that. I’ve made a study of Human literature, although John despises my abilities and infers that one must be Human to appreciate the Human creations. It is, of course, only his jealousy because I excel him. But as a Human, you should have some appreciation for the works of your race. I shall instruct you on our next trip.”
“Oh, really, I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself.” Connie demurred. There was a terrible sinking in her belly, the feeling that somehow she had just stepped out into a void. She didn’t want Tug trying to get close. It was easier not to have friends than to deal with the questions and misunderstandings that always arose among them. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she had become a Mariner, and the reason why she had slept so much this last trip? She couldn’t let Tug spoil her fresh start.
“I would be no trouble,” Tug began, but she dared to interrupt.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t ask it of you. Besides, you would soon find I had no aptitude for it at all. It was one of my lowest scores on the options test. I gave up trying to understand contemporary poetry or literature long ago.”
“We’ll see, shall we?” Tug suggested with such firmness that Connie grudgingly nodded. She was unsure as to how much authority the Arthroplana had over her. John was the captain, and theoretically the final authority over Humans on the ship. But Tug was the owner. Could he fire her? Could he report her as uncooperative, even maladjusted? The coldness squeezed up from the pit of her stomach. Don’t take a chance.
“Actually, it might be interesting to discuss Human creations with an Arthroplana. Perhaps a new viewpoint is what I need in order to enjoy them.”
“A delightful opinion! One that John, unfortunately, does not share. Which makes him most intractable about doing simple favors for me, when they involve Human literature, but perhaps you would be more helpful?”
This doesn’t sound good, Connie warned herself. Go carefully. “I’d like to be helpful,” Connie forced herself to say.
“Marvelous. It’s a simple favor, I assure you. I am in contact with certain collectors and enthusiasts on Delta Station. They have for me fresh copies of some very old Human literature. Copies which they say are remarkably intact and close to the originals; almost free of that annoying biotech drift that infects material stored too long on biodegradable media. And they’re offering it at quite reasonable prices. I can authorize your use of my station funds. It’s merely a matter of having you pick up the copies for me and bring them back to the ship.”
“Copies? From collectors?” Connie asked dubiously. Didn’t he realize what he was asking was unthinkable?
“Of course,” Tug assured her. “I told you it was a simple favor. All I need is for you to go and pick …”
“Couldn’t you just access from the public banks?”
Tug sounded disgruntled. “I suppose I could, on a very temporary basis. For whatever paltry number of hours we’re to be in port this time. A totally insufficient way to do research in depth.”
“But I thought Beastships were allowed to save from the public information banks onto the ship’s banks, because we’re away so long.” Connie didn’t just think this; she knew it. Every Beastship was allotted library space and privilege according to crew population.
“That? Our ship’s allotment was filled long ago. John’s reading habits and my needs for reference materials for my great work demand a vast amount of material. Unfortunately, having filled our legal allotment, neither John nor I can agree on what volumes can be dispensed with from our limited space to allow us to copy other material. And the Conservancy will allot us no additional space. It’s a very frustrating situation, especially as the Conservancy continues to delete books and information as they become Irrelevant or Outdated or Unnecessary. That’s by their standards, of course, not mine. As a scholar of your Humanities …”
“Information hoarding is no better than any other kind of hoarding,” Connie informed him, almost prudishly. The words came out automatically, like a conditioned response. My Readjustment? she wondered, but went on anyway. “Private collections of outdated information, especially fictional work, can have no benefit to our worlds, and only encourage consumer excesses, artificial values, and economic speculation, and …”
“Pish-tush, my dear. You forget to whom you’re speaking. As if I would ask for anything improper or disharmonious! Were we talking of ordinary Humans indulging in a mania for possession, I would concede your fundamental correctness. But we are speaking of myself, an Arthroplana. My life span lasts a multitude of yours, and my study of the Humanities will truly transcend time only if I have full access to the entire historical spectrum of Human creativity. I am sure the Conservancy would recognize my need were I to petition them. But until I have time to do so, I take my own small shortcuts. They needn’t concern you. Consider this: the material I bring aboard is then copied onto organic memory filament secreted by the Beast for precisely such a purpose, and the original medium is then biologically degraded with a thoroughness your technology can never hope of achieving. No one suffers, least of all the environment. I am surprised that I need tell you this. Another Arthroplana might actually be offended that you would even consider that one of our race might deliberately choose to do something that was not totally harmonious with the natural environment.” His tone had become progressively colder and more formal.
“I didn’t mean,” Connie began, flustered. She felt chilled, almost threatened by his words. She’d never been lectured by an Arthroplana, let alone scolded like a child with poor manners.
“You are, of course, quite young,” Tug conceded generously. “Even by Human standards, your experience is quite limited. So I forgive you, as is more divine than Human. This time. I don’t think I even need mention it to John.”
“Thank you,” she managed numbly, wondering if she weren’t missing half the conversation.
“Don’t mention it. It’s no trouble. Now, the information I need you to pick up for me should be available within an hour of our docking. Of course, I don’t need it quite that fast. My supplier will be waiting for your visit, and …”
The communication station beeped an alert. “Delta Station to Beastship Evangeline. Dock at Gate Ten for unloading, please.”
“Affirmed,” Connie replied, knowing it was only a formality. Tug would already have relayed the message to Evangeline, and she would already be responding even as Connie answered.
“We’ll talk of this again, later,” Tug said quickly, and surely it was only Connie’s nervousness that made his synthesized voice sound hurried and furtive. Tug switched intercoms abruptly. “Captain John Gen-93-Beta!” His voice rang out throughout all levels. “We’re docking. Your ship has come in!” The heartiness in his voice almost sounded real. “Best come chat with the docking crew while Evangeline and I perform the docking.”
Within his quarters deep inside Evangeline’s body, Tug hunkered into position. Tiny anterior hooks secured him in position within his host. He drew his shortened forelimbs carefully down a nerve trunk. When the ganglion bundle bulged, he darted in to lock minds with her again.
[Docking with Delta again.]
“Yes. Pay attention to the frequency emanations so you line up correctly.”
[I do. Evangeline will have Beast time?]
“Perhaps. Line up correctly.”
[I do. Evangeline would like a mating.]
A mating? Tug decided it wouldn’t fit into the schedule. He matched one of his modified nematocysts carefully to one of Evangeline’s nerve centers and expertly discharged it. So much for that impulse. He monitored her, felt her interest in mating fade as the inhibitor took effect. Docility returned to the Beastship.
[Docking with Delta Station. Tug will play a game with Evangeline?]
“Later. If Evangeline docks well, and does not complain about the unloading, then Tug will play a game. Pay attention to the frequency emanations and line up to match them. Then you will dock well.”
[Evangeline pays attention. Docking with Delta Station.]
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Megan Lindholm
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A classic science fiction adventure from the backlist of Megan Lindholm, who also writes as Robin Hobb.Generations ago humanity abandoned Earth. Now they have returned.Far from home, the Human race tries to atone for killing Terra thousands of years ago. Rescued by the enigmatic Arthroplana in their mysterious Beastships, they have been inserted into the fragile ecologies of the alien twin worlds of Castor and Pollux, where they must make no impact, where every drop of water must be returned. Humanity has adjusted – or tried to.Despite the constant watch of the Arthroplana and the Human Conservancy, John Gen-93-Beta has agreed to captain the Beastship Evangeline on an unthinkable journey to a dead planet… Earth.And so begins an engrossing voyage of discovery for five travellers: John, his First Mate Connie, stowaaway Raef, Tug the Arthroplana and the Beastship Evangeline herself. On a planet none quite expected, each learns the power of being human.