Near + Far (34 page)

"That reminds me of one of my grandmother's poems," Stentor said from where he sat. He opened the pages and read.

"Monsters hatched within our breasts,

Twine and tangle, rawrs devouring each others' hearts,

Before turning to tear our own."

He closed the book.

"Gruesome," I said. I touched the tapestry's rough wool, brushing my fingers over brown and black and shaggy cream strands.

I lifted my cup to Ilias.

"May you live in interesting times," I said to her. "May you live in times as interesting as my own."

Afternotes

Victoria Woodhull is an actual historical figure, and she's an awesome one. Someday I'm going to write a historical fantasy about her. She was an advocate of free love, a spiritualist, and a fierce advocate of women's suffrage, becoming one of the first female stockbrokers and then the first woman to run for the office of President of the United States, with Frederick B. Douglass as her Vice President. (She lost.) She also appears in "On TwiceFar, As the Ships Come and Go," which predates this story.

I'm hesitant to say much else about the story, lest I be forced to confess that to me on one level it boils down to an exploration of an expletive.

The story originally appeared in
Basement Stories
, under the editorship of James Dent and Carol Kirkman.

What has happened, I cannot change ... what will happen, I cannot decide. I am only responsible for the here and now. I will be honest in my dealings; I will acknowledge the pain I have caused. I can offer amends; I cannot demand that they be accepted. I can ask for forgiveness; I cannot demand that I be forgiven.

—Litany for the Recovering

A
ll his life, Paul Rutter had hated dirt. He'd been raised in a decrepit Project by a foster mother, along with six other children. Those early years had left him memories of stained sheets, maggots in the sink, and grime you couldn't scrub away.

It was the main reason he'd worked to become a Spacer. When he reached his first station, smelled the tang of recycled air and water, and saw a metal hallway corroded with the effluvium that humans inevitably deposit everywhere they touch, it was a vast disappointment. But better, even so, than the roots from which he'd come. And now his career, such as it was, had brought him back to a place as dirty as he'd ever seen.

The main feature of Linko Port was grease. Greasy dirt, black as tar, lay underfoot, grinding under the boot heels of the Fleet soldiers keeping order. The smell of machinists' grease from the yard that maintained the ferries coming down from its counterpart satellite far above, circling in unison with the slime green moons, was heavy in the air. Grease and black grime coated the walls of the buildings, assembled from Alliance plastics and weatherworn native woods. Of the dozens of races using this common rendezvous point, all seemed shabby and grubby, particularly the humans.

"Welcome to Linko. First assignment planet side in a while?" his attendant asked, thumbing through Paul's records.

"How can you tell?"

"It's in the walk. Spacers move their feet different, come down flatfooted like they're not used to the pull."

Rutter grunted acknowledgement. "What do I need to carry here?" he asked.

"Some form of ID; best not to leave your docco at home. No guns. Credit chits for tipping, if you plan on being out doing much. Your guild marque if you're dealing as a rep."

"I'm rep to the Solins."

The man's smile faded. "Yeah?" he said noncommittally. "For what company?"

"Little outfit, doubt you've heard of it." Rutter preferred to keep his cards close to his chest. Besides, RecoveryCo's humble beginnings, compared to the larger corporations, were a little embarassing.
No matter
, he thought. They'd done well taking a small company and turning it into an active corp, capable of interstellar negotiations. The resources provided by Solin might be the company's big strike, help them struggle their way to a respectable third tier status as an all-out, multi-market corporation.

"Not one of the Big Three? Thought CocaCorp would want a piece of that."

Rutter had wondered that himself. By all accounts, Solin was a plum piece of real estate, the kind a big company like General M or Bushink would snatch up as an asset. Across the galaxies, they'd grabbed small systems every chance they got. Solin did have a native intelligent race to be wooed, but there was a surplus of impoverished races deep in debt to the Companies. Very few, the ones who knew to hire themselves savvy (and expensive) legal counsel, managed to keep themselves free.

There was, Rutter figured, something out of the ordinary about Solin. Not out of the ordinary in a valuable way, but something tricky, something slippery or scandalous, some taint the Big Three wanted to avoid. He'd find out soon enough, he guessed.

"What about hotels here?" he asked.

"There's a few. Carnival's a bit swanker—most of the visiting dignitaries stay there. The regulars go for the Jewel or the Home House, which is the cleanest. Not so pricey. Only real difference is that the Jewel's closer to the bars. They're all on the main drag."

The Home House quarters were simple but clean as promised. A holo on the wall offered him his choice of space-scape or uploading his own images. Unlike most, he didn't carry such amenities. He flipped through the settings on the bed and chose the firmest, then settled himself to look through the docco again.

The Solins resembled nothing so much as giant wasps. Colored in dull reds and browns, they had the habits of hive insects, although the details were sketchy. Morgan had promised him more information soon, but when he checked his mail, it wasn't there yet. He fired off a reminder; Morgan was increasingly forgetful lately. "Slipped back?" he wondered, and sighed, rubbing his long fingers down the bridge of his nose.

Going into the fresher to splash his tired eyes with cold water, he looked into the mirrored wall. He saw an unremarkable face, although older looking than his fifty years. Ten years of addiction to stardrift had left him there, crevices worn irreparably into his brow and the skin surrounding his mouth, broken veins lacing the sagging skin of his cheeks. But unlike most addicts, he'd broken free, formed a company with five of the men he'd met in Rehab. Now he wondered if that had been the smartest idea; 90% slipped back into the drift, although they'd all sworn they were part of the lucky 10%.

He slipped into the Litany, murmuring it under his breath. "What has happened, I cannot change ... what will happen, I cannot decide. I am only responsible for the here and now." Muttering the familiar words, he went back to study the information he had.

The Representative building lay on the outskirts of town, a blocky tower misshapen by the demands of accommodating hundreds of different species. Blue bubbles held the distinctive toxic atmosphere of the Anjelis, and a tank near the ground floor showed swirls of blue and green liquid. Windows were tinted in shades ranging from bloody rust to bilious chartreuse, filtering Linko's dull and watery sunlight into more palatable shades.
Lucky me
, Rutter thought. Solins and humans were capable of breathing the same atmosphere, although the compromise was unpleasant to both.

The meeting room lay on the fifth floor. As he paused outside the airlock, a voice hailed him.

"You rep Rutter?"

He turned. A slight figure in Pilot's Guild green coveralls stood there. "Yes. Do you have some question?"

"Just scoping you out," the woman said. She was small, dark-haired and olive-skinned. "I flew the initial mission exploring the Solin system. Look me up afterwards and I'll buy you a drink—I'm curious about your impressions." She flipped him an ID chip and turned.

He closed his fingers over the chip, gazing after her, then turned and pressed his code into the airlock.

Inside the room the air was unpleasantly acrid, stinging his nose with its vinegar reek. At one end of the room the Solin clung to the wall, watching him with its faceted eyes. A small table and chair had been placed in the middle of the room for his convenience.

Up close, the impression of a wasp diminished but the Solin still sported two sets of paired, pale rose wings. It was unexpectedly beautiful, a creature spun of crystal or sugar, edges sharp and defined as jewels, undulled by time or dirt. A stinger ending its abdomen dripped with a clear ichor that splattered on the floor. A small pool had collected beneath it. He wondered how long it had been waiting for him.

Its eyes were equally beautiful. Malachite and lapis lazuli warred for the surface of the bulbous orbs, swirling and coalescing like gaseous clouds. Two business-like mandibles sat on either side of its tiny mouth. Segmented, they flexed at intervals as though impatient to be used.

The voice emanating from the waxy collar around its thorax, though, was disconcertingly human, down to a slight, indefinable accent. "You are the Representative?"

"Yes," he said, setting his docco tablet on the table between them.

"I am called Kizel. You may begin recording," the Solin said.

He raised an eyebrow. "You have no questions? You are aware what this contract will mean?"

"Your company will offer certain amenities, payments, and legal agreements in return for rights to planetary resources within our solar system. This negotiation will be recorded, and when it is complete, which may be a lengthy process, the record will be published publicly. Our race will achieve legal status as a result of participating, and we will no longer be vulnerable to those who wish to exploit our planet."

He nodded. "I'm impressed by your command of Galactic Custom. Not all races come to the bargaining table knowing how it is structured."

Kizel buzzed, in irritation or amusement, he couldn't tell which.

"We have accumulated necessary information," it said. "Assume that we have sufficient knowledge of humans that you do not need to explain each amenity."

A worm of confusion crawled its way through his head. Most native races weren't even close to this savvy. He took out his list and began. "Item 1: In exchange for the right to extract 500 kilograms of aurium each solar year, one energy replicator unit, no older than one year from the signing of this contract ... "

As the session wore on, he was increasingly puzzled by the intimate knowledge of galactic customs that the Solin displayed. At one point he made a slight witticism that he thought only a human would have caught. The Solin buzzed.

"What is the significance of that sound?" he asked.

"Your joke pleased me."

After a few hours, his throat dry and rasping from reciting the lists of what RecoveryCo was prepared to offer for the long, exhaustive list of the Solin system's resources, he signaled the end.

"We can resume tomorrow," the Solin said. Traditionally, a trade agreement took three sessions. Even when both parties knew exactly what they wanted—usually not the case—the Negotiation must be acted out.

The pilot was waiting outside the door.

"I didn't want to wait to talk to you. Hungry?" she said.

"Starving."

"There's a place near Jewel that makes a mean bowl of noodles."

He followed her to the restaurant. She walked with the swagger that he'd learned to expect from pilots, an insouciance sprung from their inviolability; harming a pilot could lead to a planet or system being put into Exile, trade withering away.

As they slid into the plastic booth, she signaled the server, a gray-skinned, four-armed Doolah, who brought them menu cards. Rutter fingered the sticky edges with distaste, but the pilot cast a practiced eye down the card. She said "Number 3 if you like spicy, number 5 if you like sweet, number 12 if you like bland. The beer's crap but does the trick. My name's Angry Rose."

"Sounds like a Harmonistic name."

She shook her head. "Self picked, I liked the sound of it. Harmonistics start with the noun, anyhow."

He studied her. Scarlet threads worked their way through her dark hair, and her right arm wore a sleeve of faded floral tattoos. Her outfit had the slapdash look of someone who preferred no clothes when on ship.

She studied him back, her look curious but non-sexual. "What did you think of the Solin?"

He used his napkin to wipe at the table in front of him, polishing away a smear of grease as he thought about it.

"I haven't dealt with that many alien races," he admitted. "Just in training, mainly. I didn't expect them to seem so human in their thinking."

Her lips twitched. "Wanna know why that is?"

"Huh?"

She leaned across the table towards him, lowering her voice. "They're brain eaters."

He snorted but she pressed on, her voice edged with urgency. "No, it's true. That Solin you're dealing with has at least one human mind in its own. I should know, he was a friend of mine. Luke Parse."

The Doolah slid a plate of Number 12 noodles in front of him, along with his water. Angry Rose took up her chopsticks, starting on her own plate as she watched him.

"Explain."

She claimed her friend had been the first explorer to make contact with the Solins. "Then they got to him, I dunno how. They left his body there, sitting, drooling ... smiling. Smiling like he was at his momma's tit. I was on the ship that recovered him. The Solin talked to me, said he had Luke inside him now, and that Luke didn't want me to worry about him. We took the body off planet to a medfactory, but he died a month or so afterwards. Still smiling."