A Darkling Sea (6 page)

“I understand. You can refine them as we learn more below. Remember that we come here to learn and understand, and to correct what may have gone wrong, not to judge.”

“Some on board seem to think otherwise,” said Tizhos.

Gishora knew who she meant. “I thought it best to bring Irona on the mission so that the Protectionist faction would not feel themselves excluded. But I think even he would agree that he can do little to help in the gathering of facts. So I have a perfectly valid reason to leave him in orbit where he can do no harm.”

“I do admit to curiosity, Gishora: Did you bring him in order to have something to threaten the humans with? If they do not cooperate with you, they will have to face Irona?”

Gishora sounded pained. “Tizhos, we have not come here to make threats or demands! Such behavior resembles what we wish to avoid. We only wish to learn all the facts of what happened and prevent future mistakes.”

“If the humans refuse to accept our help, what then?”

“In that case, you and I must do our work anyway. And, yes, I do take comfort from knowing I can call upon Irona if force seems necessary.”

For a moment, Gishora seemed dominant indeed, and Tizhos felt the warm sexual rush of agreement with a leader.

The pilot called back from the flight station. “Thrusters fire in one dozen seconds.”

“Good,” Gishora replied. “We wait prepared.”

A moment later they heard the hissing sound of the thrusters behind them, and a feeble gravity pushed them into their seats. Then they floated again. “All done,” said the pilot. “We begin braking in three dozen minutes.”

Gishora made the hull next to their seats transparent, and the two of them became absorbed in the view as the vast landscape of Ilmatar pivoted beneath them. The surface below was a smooth plain of white ice, criscrossed by lines and mottled with occasional spots and splotches of dark material. In a few places mountains of rock pierced the ice layer to rise barren and gray, casting long shadows. The moon was virtually airless, with no clouds or haze to block their view.

There! Just at the terminator line, at the intersection of two chasms in the ice, Tizhos saw a tiny flashing light. From this height she could not see the Terran base itself, but the landing strobe showed up clearly. If she peered hard, Tizhos could almost make out a faint smudge around the blinking light, where the humans had disturbed the pristine surface. A stain on the world.

THE trial is quick and holds few surprises. A good crowd gathers in the commonhouse, about equal numbers of Broadtail’s friends and Ridgeback’s supporters. Half a dozen landowners with their militia bolt-launchers are standing by to keep order. Judge Longfeeler 62 Deeprift opens the proceedings by asking Broadtail to recount his version of events.

“I remember the two of us arguing about the net vote after the meeting. Ridgeback steps onto my property and I order him off. He refuses to leave, and we fight. He nips off the end of my feeler, I stab him with my pincer, and he dies.”

There are no witnesses to the event besides a few children, but the judge calls Cleft-tail 5 Fisher, who describes the position of Ridgeback’s body. Smallbody 19 Doctor confirms that Ridgeback’s fatal injury is exactly the type produced by a downward pincer stab. Finally the judge asks Broadtail to clarify some points.

“I recall being very angry and striking out at him without thinking.”

“Do you remember being aware you and Ridgeback are on common ground?”

“I do not. The fight starts on my property and I remember being too busy fighting to notice where we are. I also remember Ridgeback fighting back and refusing to leave. Is that a mitigating circumstance?”

“The law is very clear. You may not kill another adult on common ground, even if the fight begins on your property. Your personal law stops at your boundary.”

“What about his death being accidental? I do not remember intending to kill him.”

“Unfortunately it is too easy to tell lies about intentions. The common law can only govern actions. Do you regret killing Ridgeback?”

“I regret it very much. I do not recall liking him, but I am not glad he is dead.”

The judge asks if anyone has any information to add. Nobody speaks up. The commonhouse gets very quiet as the judge pronounces the sentence.

“The law is clear: killing another adult on common ground is murder. No one disputes Ridgeback’s adulthood, and Broadtail admits killing Ridgeback on the public road. The penalty for murder is equally clear: expropriation and outlawry. The Sandyslope property now belongs to Ridgeback’s second- oldest apprentice, and Broadtail is proclaimed an outlaw within the bounds of this community. Does anyone offer him sanctuary?”

A landowner is the ultimate authority on his own property. If another landowner at Continuous Abundance chooses to take Broadtail as a tenant, he is safe—on his protector’s land, that is.

Nobody speaks up. Former landowners are notoriously bad tenants, and many who remember Ridgeback fondly might make things difficult for Broadtail’s protector. Broadtail is actually a little relieved. He hates the thought of being trapped on someone else’s property, lower than any apprentice or newcaught child.

The judge continues. “Because of the circumstances of the crime, I ask if anyone will safeguard him to the edge of town.”

Thicklegs 34 Sandybottom and Longhead 10 Bareslope volunteer. Neither of them belong to Ridgeback’s faction, and they’re both pretty big and have their weapons. If some tenants or apprentices want to try mobbing the outlaw just for fun, Thicklegs and Longhead can give them a fight.

Expropriation means Broadtail 38 (no more Sandyslope, and for the moment he has no profession-name) can’t even set foot on his old property again. Young Smoothpincer 14 owns it all now, even Broadtail’s beads and debts. The apprentices go with the property just like the livestock.

The hardest thing for Broadtail to leave behind is his library. He has several dozen books, including a few he has made himself. Smoothpincer can sell them, or use them to tie up bundles, or whatever he likes. He has a reputation as a hard worker, not a reader.

With Thicklegs and Longhead flanking him, Broadtail sets out down the road leading to the edge of town. They are joined by some of his friends—Roughshell 74 Westcave, Spineback 22 Coldvent, and Bigfeet 15 Ropemaker—and followed by some of Ridgeback’s old cronies. There are some pings and a few shouts of “Murderer! Split his shell!” but nobody does anything. Broadtail is still trying to get his mind used to the idea of exile. As they pass Sandyslope he suddenly feels afraid and lonely despite the crowd. The urge to hold his property against all comers is very strong. He makes himself keep walking, one step at a time. He keeps his pincers clamped shut and folded against his body.

The crowd around Broadtail thins. Nothing is happening, and the crowd gets bored and loses interest. Ridgeback’s friends are satisfied with the verdict and nobody wants to join a hunting posse to chase the outlaw in cold water. The apprentices have work to do. By the time he reaches the edge of town, Broadtail has only his escort and a couple of friends left.

At the boundary stones they pause for good-byes. Roughshell asks, “Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure,” says Broadtail. “I don’t wish to be a scavenger like Bentpincer 89.” He flicks his tail toward the little hovel where the old outlaw manages a half- starved existence just beyond the boundary.

“What about fishing?”

“No. Not here, anyway. Too many of Ridgeback’s friends are fishers or netmakers. I don’t wish for trouble. For now I will go visit some of my scientific friends and find out if they can help.” Broadtail takes momentary comfort in knowing that even if he is a murderer and outlaw, he is still a scientist, the author of a respected work.

“Good luck to you,” says Thicklegs. Spineback gives Broadtail a bag of roe balls and strips of swimmer flesh. They all brush feelers in farewell, then Broadtail turns and begins swimming steadily out into cold water. The others stand and listen for a moment, then turn and head back toward the warmth of the vent.

ROB was just heading for the galley to meet Alicia for another private breakfast together when the master alarm sounded. All over the station, lights flicked on. The seldom- used public-address system came alive.

“Attention, please, everyone!” said Dr. Sen’s voice from every terminal and comm button in Hitode Station. “I would like everyone to meet in the common area in Habitat Four in ten minutes. The station is not in danger but there is something extremely important I would like to talk to everyone about as soon as it is practical to assemble.”

Rob hurried, and since he was already dressed and halfway to the common room, he and Alicia were the first ones to show up.

Rob pulled out his computer and did a quick check of station systems. “Everything’s nominal—we’re not about to drown or anything. Supplies look good.”

“Look at orbital tracking page,” said Josef Palashnik, coming in just behind Rob. He had a bad case of bed hair, but was dressed and functional.

Alicia and Rob nearly knocked heads as they looked at his computer. The gas giant Ukko was a big red disk, surrounded by green circles marking the orbits of the moons. Ilmatar was a smaller gold disk creeping along one of the green paths, but Rob could see that there was now a little red circle around Ilmatar, with a red triangle moving along it. He tapped the triangle and his computer obligingly opened a new window.

Rob skimmed the technical description of the alien vehicle— most of which was guesswork, anyway. One thing was certain: the Sholen craft was a big one, a giant doughnut a hundred meters across, with fuel tanks and motors filling the hole in the middle. It had room for up to a hundred people, two landers, and immense fuel reserves. The intel said it
probably
didn’t mount any weapons—but of course any spacecraft could carry combat drones as cargo.

Sending a vehicle like that across thirty light-years cost a fortune. What was it doing here? Rob suspected he knew, and began to feel queasy.

The room was filling up. Rob and Alicia had claimed seats at one of the tables, but with all twenty- eight members of the Hitode staff crowding into the room, they soon could see only backs and stomachs. So Rob stood up and helped Alicia stand on her chair.

Dr. Sen climbed onto the big dining table, and stood with his bald head nearly touching the ceiling. “Thank you all for coming here so promptly. First, let me reassure everyone that there is no danger or emergency. We are all perfectly safe.”

Behind Rob someone muttered, “I sure as hell hope he didn’t get me out of bed just to tell me that.”

“Now,” continued Dr. Sen, “some of you may already know that there is a spacecraft in orbit.” The room erupted in clickings and mutterings as people pulled out pocket computers to check. “It is a Sholen interstellar vehicle, and a lander is just putting down at the surface station. I have received a message from the Sholen commander. Apparently they have learned about what happened to poor Dr. Kerlerec, and have come to evaluate the situation and make sure that we have not violated any of the treaties governing contact with alien species and that sort of thing.”

“How’d they find out so fast?” asked Angelo Ponti. “We haven’t even been able to send word to Earth yet.”

“Actually I have already sent a message. Dr. Castaverde and I agreed that Dr. Kerlerec’s death was important enough to use one of the message drones, so I sent it off just two days after the incident.”

There was a moment’s silence as twenty- seven people did mental arithmetic. Ilmatar was thirty light-years from Earth, but cutting through gimelspace divided that distance by almost a million, so call it about 300 million kilometers. The drones were big solid-fuel boosters carrying a tiny transmitter, and could hit a hundred kilometers per second. That meant a trip time of only a month, which meant . . .

“The Sholen have been eavesdropping!” Dickie Graves yelled. “There’s no way they could get a message from Earth and send a ship here.”

“I don’t know if we can necessarily make that assumption,” said Dr. Sen. “They could have better boosters than ours, or have transmitters positioned in gimelspace to relay messages. At any rate, that is not the most important issue at this moment. What is important is that two Sholen are coming down to Hitode as we speak. The elevator is on its way up to collect them right now. We have two days to make everything ready for their visit.”

“What if we don’t let them come down?” Dickie called out. “Tell them to fuck off and send them right back home again!”

“Taking a confrontational attitude like that will accomplish nothing, Dr. Graves. The treaty gives both species inspection rights outside our respective home systems. We are obliged to let them examine the station and interview everyone involved in the Kerlerec incident.” At that particular moment, everybody managed to be looking at something other than Rob Freeman. “However, I think we can avoid a great deal of difficulty if the Sholen find nothing which might indicate contact with the Ilmatarans, or create any mistaken impression. We should place all the artifacts from the city sites out on the seafloor, encrypt any recordings of Ilmatarans, and relabel the cadaver sections. I also need a group to make a thorough sweep of the area around the station to make sure none of our equipment or waste has been left outside.”

“Why do all this hiding?” asked Alicia. “We haven’t done anything wrong. All that research is allowed by the treaty, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, Dr. Neogri. But there is a certain amount of public relations involved here. If the Sholen make a complaint about us and can present things like cadaver samples and artifacts, it will affect public opinion back on Earth. I’m afraid it is not enough to simply be innocent of wrongdoing; we must be sure to avoid anything which could be misinterpreted.”

Since everyone was still not looking at him, Rob cleared his throat and raised his hand. “Dr. Sen? The Sholen are going to need someone to show them around, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they will certainly need a guide. I had intended to perform that task myself but if you have a suggestion I’m sure we all would like to hear it.”

“Since they’re going to want to debrief me anyway about what happened to Henri, why not let me be the tour guide?”

“That is a perfectly sensible suggestion and I am happy to let you take over that part of the work. Now, we must all get started as quickly as possible. We only have two days.”

THE Terran base on the surface of Ilmatar was built at the bottom of a long crack in the ice that the Terrans called Shackleton Linea. The landing area and beacon were up on the edge of the crevasse, and in order to reach the base proper the two Sholen had to seal up their suits and descend the cliff face in an open platform suspended from a crane that looked alarmingly makeshift to Tizhos. Their suit radios weren’t on the same channel as that of their Terran guide, so the entire trip down was spent in silence.

The base itself was nothing but a squat foam- covered cylinder, about the size of a lander, standing on a cleared patch of ice on the floor of the crevasse. Clumped nearby were a power plant, an antenna mast, some machinery for making rocket fuel out of ice, and the gaping hole of the shaft down through the ice to the ocean beneath. Some distance off was the plasma furnace for waste disposal, which had made a huge ugly stain of soot on the ice for kilometers around. The whole place was surrounded by a litter of construction equipment and scrap.

Another suited human met them at the airlock, and made some gestures of greeting before they all went inside. According to the glyphs on the hatch, the airlock was built to hold four humans, so two humans and a pair of Sholen made a very tight fit.

Within the habitat it was cramped, overheated, and foul- smelling. The crew consisted of three male humans and one female, and all were dressed in very dirty suit liners. A male with a hairless head stepped forward and extended his hand in a gesture of greeting.

“Welcome to Shackleton. I’m Claudio Castaverde, director of operations up here. We have a room for the two of you, if you need to rest.”

“Very kind of you, but we rested in the lander,” said Gishora. He spoke the most common Terran language far more fluently than Tizhos could. “We must go down to the main base as soon as we can.”

“The elevator is on its way up now. There’s nobody aboard so it will be here in just a few hours. In the meantime, if you’d like something to eat or drink, we were just about to have dinner. Would you like to join us?”

Tizhos felt her mouth grow dry with disgust at the thought of eating in such a foul- smelling place, but Gishora was a hardened diplomat. “Thank you very much. That would give us great pleasure.”

They did not actually eat any of the Terran food. Tizhos knew that Sholen could safely eat the starches and sugars, but she also knew the humans had a dangerous habit of flavoring everything with animal proteins that would almost certainly cause an allergic reaction.

So Tizhos and Gishora dined on the food they had brought along. Their rations were simple balls of blended carbohydrates and lipids, but each was flavored with a mixture of aromatics, pheromones, and psychoactives, and the balls were coded to be eaten in sequence. The meal began with subtle vegetable tastes mixed with stimulants, progressed to strong spices and disinhibitors to improve the conversation, and wound up with aphrodisiacs and a mild narcotic with a blend of pickled fruit flavors. Tizhos felt mellow and well-disposed toward everyone afterward.

While they ate, Gishora and the Terrans discussed the scientific research they were conducting. The hairless one, Castaverde, was studying the ionosphere and magnetic fields of Ilmatar, and how they interacted with the more powerful fields of the giant planet it orbited. The female was using a series of laser reflectors to measure the movement of the ice plates. The other two males were in charge of maintaining the base and the elevator. All four of them seemed desperately eager to show the two Sholen around. Tizhos had to suffer through a trip out to view the waste incinerator, and tried to stand patiently as the female human went on endlessly about the accursed thing.

“The shell’s just hull plating we scavenged from some of the cargo drop pods. Inside it’s all lined with native basalt. Satoshi and I spent two weeks in the crawler dragging a sled full of rock back from the nearest outcrop. There’s a pure oxygen feed and a hydrogen plasma torch; anything organic gets completely burned up in minutes. No contamination.”

“But it produces much soot,” said Tizhos. “One can see it from orbit.”

The female made a gesture with her shoulders. “The original plan was just to dump all the waste on a piece of rocky surface somewhere and let it sit there for the next billion years. But you guys wanted us to burn everything. Burning stuff makes ashes.”

“You could take it all away from this world.”

“Are you kidding?” her voice was shrill over the radio. “That’s what, ten kilos of fuel for each kilo of garbage? We’re already mining as much ice as you guys will let us.”

Tizhos looked over at the station and saw that the elevator capsule was just emerging from the top of the shaft.

“I have enjoyed speaking with you, but I see the elevator coming up. I need to go now.”

Despite their best efforts to make the humans hurry, it was more than an hour before Gishora and Tizhos could board the elevator, and then more delays as their gear was loaded and two of the Terrans checked out all the onboard systems. So when the ice wall began sliding upward past the tiny porthole in the hatch, Tizhos felt a tremendous sense of relief.

The elevator was a little self- contained habitat unit, almost as big as the surface station. It had four human-sized beds, a table, a little waste-disposal unit, and a cabinet stocked with dehydrated Terran foods. The two Sholen had their own foodmaker and distilled water to drink, and plenty of time for conversation. The descent took thirty- six hours to give their bodies time to adjust to the pressure.

Tizhos actually enjoyed the elevator descent. She and Gishora had complete freedom to talk about their work—Ilmatar and the Terrans. It was almost like being a student again. Tizhos could simply enjoy the company of another smart, curious Sholen for the better part of three Shalina days. Their sexual play became more than just an official duty.

She briefed him about the planet and its inhabitants. “Of course,” she cautioned, “most of what we know about Ilmatar comes from the Terrans. They may well have learned more since my last opportunity to read their findings.”

“I must ask you to compare what you have read with what we see here,” said Gishora. “Note any differences. If you find anything the Terrans have concealed, let me know at once.”

“I believe you said we did not come here to judge.”

“True. But we must strive for accuracy and impartiality. Just as I cautioned against too much suspicion, we should also avoid trusting them too much.”

“I understand.”

“Please proceed,” said Gishora.

Tizhos called up an image on her terminal. “The moon Ilmatar orbits the giant planet the humans call Ukko. I believe these names derive from the mythology of a human culture exterminated long ago by a more aggressive one. Ilmatar fits a standard model for giant planet moons far outside the life zone of the central star: a rocky core covered by a thick layer of water ice. Diameter of 6,400 kilometers. Tidal heating has liquified the interior, creating an ocean two kilometers deep, buried under a crust of ice a kilometer thick.”

“Hence this long ride down. I understand the physical details. Tell me about the things which live here.”

“Life on Ilmatar resembles similar ecosystems on other subglacial ocean moons. We know of three others. On all of them, volcanic vents on the seafloor serve as energy sources, giving off warm water and carbon or sulfur compounds. The native organisms make use of both heat gradients and chemical energy.”

“Tell me how such a low-energy system can support intelligent beings.”