City of Pearl (7 page)

“No, God provided for us well from the start, even in these unlikely circumstances.” But Josh didn't elaborate. She had no doubt the answer—if it ever came—would be on the payload's minds as well.

Josh's son, James, hard and square like his father, pointed proudly to a plate of fried burger-like slices. “Soy,” he said. “I grew the beans.” He seemed like a nice kid, a million miles from the evil little bastards she was used to dealing with.

“Adaptable stuff, soy,” she said, awkward, and wished again that she had some talent for rapport with youngsters that extended beyond handcuffing them.

They all ate as if the plain food was the focus of their existence. She reminded herself that there could be no scope for frivolous luxuries here. Anything they needed had to be built or grown or developed by one of their community. There were no shops. In a small group of people, that meant immense hard work and ingenuity. And it meant they cared about each other, because they had to if they wanted to survive.

Shan suddenly envied them.

“I have a lot of questions,” she said. “I want to know how you've managed without medical support, for example, and how you replace and repair machinery. That sort of thing. But I'll save it for later.”

“Tell us when you're tired and we'll make up a bed for you,” Josh said, ignoring her in an oddly kind way. It was another definite steer away from technical matters. “Tomorrow we can discuss landing your team.”

Back at Josh's house, his wife showed her to a small room with a futon-type bed and a hemispherical wash basin served by a short length of piping. Deborah pointed to a recess like a wardrobe space. “The lavatory is there,” she said, and managed a slight smile as she backed out of the door.

Shan had a sudden worried thought that what she had used as the toilet bowl earlier that day might not have been one at all. The idea plagued her as she sat down on the futon. Had she used the handbasin, for Chrissakes? The design could have been any sort of receptacle.
Oh, hell.
She might never live that one down.

It was time to update
Thetis.
She flicked open the swiss.

“I thought you'd run into trouble,” Lindsay said. Her voice was breaking up over the link. “How's it going?”

“Fine,” Shan said. “But we have a few issues to deal with at this end.”

“And a few at this end, too. We had to revive all the payload. Potential cryo failure. I'm sorry I didn't consult you first, ma'am, but—”

“That's fine. You had to make the call.”

There was a slight, strangled pause. “Very good, ma'am.” Lindsay obviously hadn't expected that response. But it wasn't fine at all. Things were running too fast. “It's getting a bit cozy up here. The ship's not built for full life-support for this many people. When can we disembark?”

“I have some talking to do before we can do that.”

“It
is
secure down there, isn't it?”

“The colonists aren't overtly hostile, but we aren't exactly welcome.”
And we won't be the best thing that's happened to Constantine, either.
“If we disembark the research team, they have to be prepared to accept a lot of restrictions. Will you prep them for that disappointment?”

“Whatever it is, it won't be as disappointing as running out of oxygen. We've got forty-eight to seventy-two hours. The generator can't keep up.”

“Understood. Just find the time to tell them they can't take biological samples. Period.”

“Says who?”

“The colonists.”

There was a long pause, and Shan thought the link had gone down. She could hear shuffling in the passageway outside the bedroom door and wondered if she had been overheard.

“Commander Neville?”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Let me make one thing clear. I have my orders, somewhere in my memory, and they may not entirely meet the aspirations of our commercial colleagues. But your role is to support the civilian administration, which is me.”

“Understood.”

“If you're telling me that there's a risk to safety if we keep revived personnel in orbit, then I'll ask the colonists for permission to land everyone.”

“I do believe that's the situation.”

“Stand by, then.”

Shan struggled to her feet to prepare for bed. It took her a few seconds to work out that the whole tube above the basin had to be twisted to release the water. It flowed handhot, and she stripped off her fatigues and personals and rinsed them in the basin before wiping herself down with a quick-drying cloth from the do-it-all pack zipped into her jacket.

She draped the clothing over the spigot, and the fabric was already drying before she had managed to find the controls for the lighting and shut her eyes.
Did I really pee in the damn washbasin?
No, she couldn't have. It was definitely a toilet. It had a flush.

Funny how that sort of thing worried her. She had a crippled ship and a restless crew and—probably—aliens who could disable an entire fleet out there somewhere, yet that toilet just wouldn't take its proper place in the queue of priorities.

No, it was definitely a lavatory. It had to be.

That matter settled, she plunged instantly into an unusually dreamless oblivion.

Shan found it even harder to get up off the low bed in the morning than it had been to lie down on it the night before. She eventually straightened up and washed in ice-cold water to brace herself before venturing out of her room. She expected to find Josh's family up and about, but found only a place setting at the small table and a note telling her to help herself from the stores.

Of course. It was Christmas morning. They would be at the church. She helped herself to a few slices of a crumbly honey-colored bread and a bowl of fruit. There was even tea—real tea leaves,
Thea sinensis,
smelling of sweet tar and leather. She inhaled the fragrance from the jar and suddenly felt a little more optimistic. It wasn't going to plan, but it might be no disaster either; she could land who she needed to land, give them their restrictions, let them potter around at a discreet distance from the colony and then leave. No longer than eighteen months, maybe even a year. How much damage could that cause?

She found a jug of soy milk and was savoring her second cup of tea before she finally accepted the scenario that was playing out at the back of her mind. It was not what the researchers did that would matter. It was the fact that they were there at all. The true consequences would not be felt for centuries, but they would be felt one day, and they were already set in motion.

Constantine was on the most Earthlike planet that humanity had reached so far. Sooner or later, more humans would try to find their way here as the colonists had done.

It was a shame that such an idealistic little community was finally facing the end of Eden. Even without her implanted orders, Shan would have felt a pressing need to ally with them. Perault had known more about her than she had realized.

The name
Helen
surfaced again for a few seconds, and she brushed it aside for the time being.

 

Josh was not yet sure how to take Shan Frankland. He pondered the dilemma while sowing broad beans. Not even the arrival of unwanted visitors—or Christmas Day—could be allowed to interfere with the business of survival.

The woman seemed straightforward. She asked his permission at every stage, as if she accepted Constantine's sovereignty. But she had that air of having a task to complete, and a way about her that suggested she was wearing a uniform mentally if not in fact. Had Aras been here, he would have known at once whether she was to be trusted.

The secular world was greedy, destructive, promiscuous. He had the colony's Earth archives to prove it. Those in uniforms were its instruments, imposing the will of corrupt and avaricious corporations, and those of their puppets, the federal governments. Now the secular world and its twin demons of commerce and government were walking his streets. If it was a test of faith, it was a hard one.

The contact with corruption might be bad for Constantine. It would be even worse for the beings with whom they shared this world.

He needed to talk to Aras.

“We have about three generations' breathing space to find somewhere else,” Martin said. He walked along behind Josh's rotavator, dropping martock beans into the emerging drills at practiced intervals. “That's how long it will take them to decide that this is land worth taking and send more ships.”

“We're not leaving,” Josh said. “We have a duty here. And the only way we'll find another world is if Aras's people find it for us.”

“But the seculars will overrun us. It'll be many years, but they
will
come.”

“You have to have faith.” A cluster of stones brought the rotating tines to a halt, and Josh had to back up a little and break them apart with a hoe. “Aras and his people stopped the isenj. They can stop anybody.”

“We don't want any more wars fought here.”

“Martin, you read too many stories. It's hard to wage a war across light-years. It's also hard to lift that tonnage in invasion forces. It'll be a slow process, and slow processes can be stopped without bloodshed.”

Josh wanted to believe that. He guided the rotavator, and Martin lagged a little, as if sulking. “We risk losing it all,” he said, barely audible.

“We have to stand firm.” That was Josh's job, to lead and to be a rock for them all. “Aras will protect us. But we also have to protect Aras. You know how these seculars would exploit him and his condition.”

Martin finished dropping the beans into place and walked back to kick the soil over them and to scattermarigolds as companion planting. He shuffled his boots back and forth in a well-rehearsed rhythm, pausing to let a few of the curled seeds fall from his hands. Then he fumbled in the soil until he found the irrigation pipe, and turned the valve until faint gurgling could be heard. The two men stood in silence, watching honeybees weighing down the delicate pink-tinged bells of comfrey flowers. The insects—one of the few species the colony had chosen to revive—seemed to be having no trouble navigating by an alien sun.

“If I explain to the Frankland woman that we're here under the patronage of an alien government, she will see the implications,” said Josh.

“And suppose she doesn't?”

“Then I'll be more explicit. She'll understand military superiority. They'll leave.”

Josh began ploughing again, and Martin followed him silently. He didn't need to say that Josh's hope was a forlorn one. When he glanced up from the furrow, there was a figure in gray fatigues and a bulky waistcoat moving through the patches of crops. Shan Frankland was picking her way through the fields towards them, zigzagging as she went. She appeared to be keeping to the comfrey and avoiding bare earth, as if she understood what she was doing.

“Happy Christmas,” she called as she came within earshot of them. “Deborah told me where to find you. Long time since I've seen dwarf comfrey.”

So she had enough sense to recognize where there might be seeds and what was a green manure crop, then. This wasn't his picture of the urban terrestrial human. Either she had done a great deal of homework and was a practiced deceiver, or she had something in common with them.

“Can we talk, Josh? I have a problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

“We've had to revive the research team sooner than I had hoped. There's been a failure in the cryo system. We can'tleave them in orbit because the
Thetis
isn't designed for full life-support for that many people, and we can't chill them down again yet, not until we can isolate the fault. So we need to land them all, and within the next day or so. Can we do that? Subject to your restrictions, of course.”

Josh looked into her face, which told him nothing other than that her height and unblinking gaze unsettled him. If only Aras were here. Josh had no idea what he was looking for, but he knew politicians and their minions lied. Perhaps, though, she was telling the truth. Either way, it no longer mattered. They would have to confront the situation sooner or later.

“Then land them,” he said. “How many are there?”

“Eight, plus six Royal Marines and their commanding officer. We can land accommodation modules and our own rations. We're equipped for an unsupported mission.”

“But we must connect your camp to the waste-recovery system before you can use it. All waste here is recycled.”

“Okay, show the booties how it works and they'll do the rest. They're pretty adaptable, even if they're not sappers.” She looked at him as if he hadn't understood her. “Booties. Bootnecks. Marines. Look, this isn't a ploy to get the team down here, Josh. I had hoped to leave them in cryo until I'd decided whether they should land at all.”

Was his suspicion that plain to see? He shrugged. “What's done is done. There are things that I haven't told you that you need to be aware of, though.”

“Go ahead.”

“We're not alone on this planet.”

“I assure you we'll respect the environment. No live samples of native species, no—”

“Forgive me. I mean we're not the only reasoning species with a claim to this world.”

Her spine straightened sharply: she seemed even taller. “Ah, it
is
already inhabited, then.”

Of course it is,
he thought.
You've seen the ecology
. But she meant, he knew, that there were aliens here who were
people.

“There is one indigenous species, and another with a diplomatic presence here.”

“
Two
other races?”

“Three, but the third is kept away from landing here by the others.”

Josh needed none of Aras's olfactory skills to tell that the Frankland woman was shocked. She looked away, blew a little puff of surprise and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the soil. After a few seconds she looked up again. “That really does alter the situation, doesn't it?”

“Perhaps you should carry out your survey within our colony and then return home.”

She resumed her fixed gaze at the soil again, and neither Martin nor Josh said anything to interrupt it until she was ready.

“May I contact these aliens? Can you arrange that?”

“I'll see,” said Josh.

They watched her walk back across the field, still picking out the same zigzag path, and waited until she was out of earshot before resuming their conversation. Josh could hear Martin rattling the dried beans in their cloth pouch, passing the bag from hand to hand in agitation. He nudged him.

“Stop worrying,” he said. “Trust in the Lord. It's not the first test we've had, and it won't be the last.” He reached and took the bag from Martin's fidgeting fingers, irritated. “Finish up here. I must call Aras.”

 

The bezeri vessel brought Aras up to the rocky coast of the peninsula and bobbed to the surface to let him out. He waded back to the shore and turned to watch the translucent pod fall back below the waves and disappear, leaving broken amber reflections on the surface. The sun was rising again.

When he had picked his way up the narrow path to the top of the headland, he looked back down into the sea. There were a dozen or more bezeri pods visible just under the surface of the water. It was unusual to see that many on patrol at once, an indication of the anxiety they felt about the arrival of new creatures in the Dry Above.

The path up the shallow cliff wasn't visible unless someone happened to be right on top of it. It wasn't the wess'har way to leave marks on the landscape if it could be avoided, and certainly not on someone else's planet. The bezeri would neither have known nor cared. But Aras did.

He kept up a brisk pace across the short silver moss. The roads hadn't moved at all since he had been here a few days ago. At this time of year, before their growth spurt, they tended to be stable; he could easily pick them out from the dangerous wetsands and bog beneath the moss by the way they curved proud of the ground like engorged vessels under skin. He managed a brisk pace.

Everything he owned, or ever would own, was folded into the pack slung across his back, as Targassat had taught. If you couldn't carry it with you, you didn't need it. If it didn't perform several functions, then it was not worth carrying. And if it had no function—well, then it was an unwess'har thing, a waste of resources and something to be avoided.

Aras had tried to explain Targassat's philosophy to Josh's ancestor, Benjamin. The humans relished frugality. It was probably more out of the enjoyment of self-denial than concern for the world, but their intentions were irrelevant. Only their actions mattered. They took readily to the waste and water recovery systems he demonstrated for them. They'd even got used to the idea of concealing their homes in the ground, although he knew their motivation was primarily to remain undetected rather than not to interfere with the natural order.

Their one sticking point had been the church. They insisted it be a testament to the glory of their God, and that meant grandeur. Aras turned a blind eye to it because it had so many functions. There was no harm in making a functional thing beautiful. He had even made the decorative glass windows for them, with alien and native creatures, and the image of a human who respected all species and had been—if he had known it, worlds and lifetimes away—a fine example of Targassat's philosophy:
Francis.

Aras still didn't understand sainthood. He had thought he had understood what God was, but it wasn't a species after all. Nor were angels a species, either; but the humans insisted angels could see the blues and violets in the opal glass just as well as Aras, even if humans could not. It was all part of
God's will.

He thought that it was just as well for the colony that they had come across him first, and not an isenj, or their God's will might have manifested itself a little differently.

The silver moss of the downland gradually thinned out, and he was in knee-high purple-blue brush again. It blended into a single horizon ahead of him, a smoke sea punctuated by islands of trees in their bright orange growth cycle. This was the wild and untouched land outside the controlled environment he had built for the humans. He liked the blue brush best. At every cycle, he brought a few humans out into the wilderness to see the true world, and their awe always delighted him. It was as if it had a universal truth. All species found it beautiful. But the poor bezeri never saw their Dry Above, uniform brown on their maps, in all its variety and glory.

The sun was close to overhead now. He could see a shimmer of light in the near distance, sun dancing on the quartz deposits in the rocks. Benjamin had seen the Temporary City; he had even traveled to the planet of Wess'ej, to the city of F'nar itself, and seemed very moved by the iridescent deposits left on every sun-facing hard surface by the swarms of
tem
flies. He called it the City of Pearl. Josh had wept at the sight of it, too. It was worth taking humans to see it for the joy on their faces.