His Majesty's Starship (21 page)

“The clans of the Bay Coast and the Peninsula were neighbours,” he said. Julia blinked because it appeared that in two areas the floor of the theatre was suddenly covered with Rusties. She looked again and saw that the effect was just shadows on the boulders. Glancing around, the only light source she could see was in the form of a couple of bonfires; other Rusties were using wood cut-outs to cast shadows.

“Their grazing lands were wide and flat. The water was clean-” Arm Wild paused. “I am sorry. That was a very clever pun that always amuses me. I question that you caught it.”

“Um, no,” Julia said, still taken with the shadow play below.

“No matter. The sense of rhythm is probably lost in translation too. The ... there is no translation, be rapid, tell me a large Earth predatory animal-”

“Lions?”

“-the lions were few and the ... again, another ...”

“Tyrannosaurs?”

“... tyrannosaurs had been driven out. There was serenity in the land.”

The fires flared up and Julia jumped. Leaf Ruby’s voice became louder, its gestures more urgent.

“The summer was long and hot but there was no cause for worry. The leaves were drier than usual but still they gave sustenance. The streams dwindled to trickles but the rivers still ran and the wells were deep.

“On ... our calendar cannot be translated easily, I am sorry ... on a particular date in the Peninsula, four hundred years ago, flames and lava spewed forth from the earth.”

Now it really did seem that streams of molten rock were running down the cliff face, glowing red and wicked. The theatre was suddenly a glimpse into Hell.

“The sky darkened and ash blew across the grazing lands, but still there was no worry, for the earth fires had come before and the people of the Peninsula had survived. The blaze lasted only two and a half days and the Peninsula clan prepared to move on to areas where the ash and lava had not fallen.”

A new element was being added to the flowing lava: the flow was from above but a new, different glow was coming from below. More orange than red, it seemed that flames were licking up the cliff. Leaf Ruby stood in the heart of an inferno.

“The fires from the earth returned whence they had come but their children spread out across the land. The trees and the grazing lands were consumed. There was nowhere for the Peninsula people to go.”

The story went on and Julia was swept up in it. It didn’t matter that all the skills and nuances being used by Leaf Ruby were completely lost on her, or that apparently part of the form was to repeat whole chunks of text verbatim, faithfully echoed by Arm Wild. The fires swept over the entire peninsula and their smoke clouded the sky for hundreds of miles around. The Peninsula clan was forced to move south to the Bay Coast and the Bay Coast clan didn’t want them. The Bay Coast wasn’t as naturally rich as the Peninsula had been and the long drought hadn’t been kind there either; the vegetation was tough and sparse and the last thing the occupants needed was a much larger refugee population sweeping in and doubling the drain on resources. The clash of the two clans was shown vividly by the shadows, where it seemed the two masses of Rusties swept violently into one another.

The Bay Coast clan, not wishing to condemn their neighbours to starvation, offered them the use of sub-standard grazing lands that the Bay Coast clan didn’t want, which could have supported perhaps a tenth of the Peninsula clan. The Peninsula clan pressed for more but the Bay Coast clan couldn’t provide it. The clans began a mutual sniping campaign, individual prides encountering and first insulting, then fighting, then massacring one another. The fighting spread from the prides to the lodges and then to the clans themselves.

The Peninsula clan was larger, it could more easily afford the losses and it was desperate. At the final battle it seemed certain that the Bay Coast clan would be annihilated.

And then the Alpine clan attacked.

Julia mentally filled in the sound of a cavalry bugle as a new horde of Rusties swept in from stage left: bigger, larger, fiercer but still only shadows. The battle was long and brutal but the Alpine clan was larger still than either of the others. After a week of fighting the Peninsula clan sued for peace, asking only that it not be made to return to the old lands. By now, sheer attrition had worn it down to a manageable size and it was merged with the Bay Coast clan. Its Pride Seniors were put to death and Bay Coast Seniors installed instead. Peace reigned again.

End of story.

The light faded away and there was only darkness where previously Julia’s imagination told her there had been dispossessed populations, natural catastrophes, epic battles and slaughter, and yet there had only been one Rustie, some fires and a clever use of shadows.

“Is that it?” Peter said.

“Arm Wild,” said Julia, “if we stand up and clap our hands together vigorously, will it cause offence?”

“It will not,” Arm Wild said. So she did, standing up and clapping furiously until her hands were sore. “Your own hands. I see.”

Julia was bewildered by Peter’s lack of reaction. “Come on, Pete, don’t say you weren’t impressed,” she said.

He shrugged. “It was all right.”

All right! Julia fumed. She shouldn’t blame the poor boy – raised on Mars, of all places, and growing up in an artificial, high-tech environment. He couldn’t appreciate what he had just seen – a low-tech virtual reality. As far as she could tell, the spotlight at the start had been the only artificial effect: the rest had just been fire and shadows. But the effect, the effect!

Lights came up to illuminate the whole area and once more the theatre was just a rocky bowl. Julia felt the same sense of let-down as at the end of a human play, when the show is over and the auditorium is just a large room again. Leaf Ruby was climbing down from its ledge, head first, as nimble as a monkey. When it reached the bottom it trotted towards them.

“Leaf Ruby says it is elated you enjoyed the performance,” said Arm Wild. “I have told it that the noise caused by your actions indicates appreciation, the louder the better.”

“Tell Leaf Ruby I have never seen anything like it,” Julia said. “Tell him ... it ... whatever that I’m amazed, impressed ... you get the idea.”

And she was. She could only guess at the power of Leaf Ruby’s verbal delivery but the light show alone was enough to stun a human crowd. The first thing that her cross-cultural institute would do would be to study Rustie fulltalk and see how, if at all, its devices could be applied to humans.

Arm Wild said passed the message on. “It thanks you and hopes to talk to you some more, but meanwhile has business to attend to.”

They strolled slowly out of the amphitheatre and back towards the town, enjoying the movement in their limbs: amazingly, the performance had taken nearly two hours. Julia poured coffees from her backpack for herself and Peter and they sipped at them as they walked.

“Did Leaf Ruby write the show?” Julia asked.

“No. The original was written shortly after the events described, commissioned by the Senior of the Alpine clan.”

“But the interpretation was Leaf Ruby’s?”

“The performance was a reflection of Leaf Ruby’s native talent,” Arm Wild said, which Julia took as a ‘yes’.

“But why did the Alpine clan join in?” Peter said. “It didn’t sound like they had any interest at all.”

“They and the Bay Coast clan were of the same nation,” Arm Wild said: a fact that must have been self-explanatory to the Rusties. “The Peninsula clan were alone, cut off from their own nation by the fires.”

“There were a lot of nations, once?”

“There were many.”

Four hundred years, Julia thought. Four hundred years ago it had been 1749: the United States was still an impossible dream; Handel was writing the Firework Music; the British were carving out their Indian empire. It thrilled her that while all that had been going on, these events too had been happening, unguessed at and unknowable on Earth yet all too real and made solid by that evening’s show.

“Why did the Peninsula clan accept their defeat so readily?” she asked. “Their Seniors were all put to death and they meekly accepted new Seniors from a foreign clan being imposed on them.”

“Because it was the inclination of the greater whole,” Arm Wild said. “No pride would ever resent its Senior. The concept is, excuse me, entirely alien.”

“Very democratic,” said Peter.

“No, not democratic,” Arm Wild said. “As I understand democracy, the minority may give in to the majority but they will continue to harbour their private opinions and resentments, and take action upon them. With us, the minority is ... the concept is so clear to me, it is hard to describe ... the minority is absorbed. The majority also changes, however. Both sides meet each other halfway and there is an overall change. There is no dissension.”

“Weird!” said Julia.

“It is our way,” Arm Wild said. Another Rustie trotted up to them and spoke to Arm Wild. He turned to the two humans. “Web More asks if you would like to witness a quickening.”

“A quickening?” Peter said.

“An important moment for the pride,” said Arm Wild. “It has made enquiry and they say you are welcome to observe. An invitation like this is a gesture of friendship.”

“Just observe?” said Julia.

“Just that. You could hardly participate.”

“Why, thank you,” Julia said, “we’d love to.”

“Always wanted to see a quickening,” Peter said, glancing at Julia. She shrugged back at his enquiring expression. She didn’t know what one was, either.

Arm Wild led them to where a crowd of Rusties was gathering by one of the fires. The two humans were tall enough to stand at the back and see what was happening. There was a space in the middle of the crowd and a Rustie stood there, alone. Julia wondered if they were going to see some kind of trial.

“That is Air Quiet, the initiator,” Arm Wild said. Julia nodded as though that meant something.

The crowd parted to let another Rustie through. It walked over to Air Quiet and the two stood, facing each other.

“Wood Merry, the quickener.”

The two stood facing each other, engaged in some silent communion. Then their graspers reached out and twined around one another. Julia frowned as a thought struck her-

The Rusties reared up on their hind legs, their graspers still entwined and now their forehands grasped each other’s shoulders.

“Oh my god ...” she whispered, as she realised. She heard Peter gulp. The crowd of Rusties was clustering around the couple into a tight knot, shuffling and murmuring amongst themselves. Some were hopping up and down on all fours. The two at the centre pulled themselves towards each other into a tight embrace.

The crowd’s excitement was palpable and the typical Rustie smell was strong in the air. After about a minute, Air Quiet and Wood Merry backed off from each other, untwining and letting go. They dropped down to all fours and walked away from each other without a backwards glance.

Julia and Peter stood staring at where the scene had been. Peter was round eyed and slack jawed; Julia felt an enormous grin spread over her face.

“A very satisfactory quickening,” Arm Wild said.

“Wham bam, thank you ma’am,” Julia murmured. If she had just seen what she thought she had seen, it lacked her idea of romance.

Peter cleared his throat. Julia glanced at him and even though it was dark, she was certain he was blushing. “Arm Wild,” he said, “w-was that a ... a m-mating?”

“A mating?” Arm Wild was silent for a moment. “If I comprehend my translator properly, I infer it was what you would call a mating. We would call it a quickening. Our reproductive cycle was mentioned in the information pack.”

“Ah ...” Julia glanced at Peter, who still seemed slightly dazed. “You’ll have to refresh our memory.”

“It is very simple. When the pride needs a new member, one of its number will initiate a foetus, a clone of the initiator. When it has reached a certain stage of growth, it requires quickening – the genetic input of a different pride member. After that it will grow to term as a genetically individual First Breed. You were not aware of this?”

“We didn’t get that far in the pack,” Peter said. He seemed to have his voice back again. “Sorry. Mating ... quickening ... whatever you call it, it’s a bit more private for us.”

“That was not the impression I gained from Earth’s entertainment channels,” Arm Wild said.

“Well, it would be if you’d watched the ones on Mars.”

Julia smothered a giggle.

“I was of course cognoscent that humans had a different approach but I have never seen it done in the flesh,” Arm Wild said. “Would you two care-”

“No!” they said together.

“-to attend the naming ceremony for the child?”

They felt foolish. “Um ... the naming ceremony?” Peter said.

“In five months, when the child is born,” Arm Wild said. “It is customary for witnesses at the quickening to attend.”

They looked at each other. Julia looked back at the Rustie.

“We’d be honoured, if we’re still on the Roving in five months time,” said Julia.

“Five months, no problem,” Peter agreed.

“Excellent,” said Arm Wild.

“Who decides the name?” Julia asked.

“No one decides. Air Quiet is the initiator and Wood Merry the quickener, so the child will be Air Merry. The child does not of course know that, so must be informed, at the ceremony.”

“Your young are born able to talk?” said Julia.

“In a limited sense – bodytalk only – but yes, we can surely communicate. Excuse me, I am being called.”

Julia looked after Arm Wild as the Rustie walked away . “Fascinating,” she said.

Peter wiped his brow. “Unexpected,” he agreed. “Public mating ...”

“Quickening,” Julia corrected, with a grin. “You know, Pete, I’m finally beginning to wonder just how accurate all our preconceptions about them have been. These creatures are aliens, pure and simple, and we’ve always known that, but we still think of them as four-legged humans. Even if we don’t trust them, even if we assume they’re up to something, we still ascribe human characteristics. But they live in prides, they’re hermaphrodites, they breed to order ... look at the Peninsula clan, quietly accepting defeat like that. We don’t know the first thing about the way the Rustie mind works. Our species are so different that we just can’t assume anything about them. Anything at all.”