Under Strange Suns (26 page)

“Yes. They’ve domesticated certain food animals, but haven’t managed to harness any laboring beasts.”

“Something about three-limbed locomotion? Not a smooth enough–what’s the word, gait?–for pulling a plow?”

“Could be. Might be an animal husbandry engineering problem we can tackle. Maintain that level of curiosity, Aidan. Keep your mind busy.”

Or I’ll go crazy
, Aidan thought, finishing the unspoken bit of Yuschenkov’s advice.

Farmhouses began to give way to more elaborately designed buildings as they neared the outskirts of Girdled-by-Fields. The structures were of the same fundamental construction, but showed a higher degree of care. The doors were almost all of wood, and windows more common, though none boasted glass panes, only shutters. Packed dirt paved the streets, which were wide and straight.

“I’m a bit surprised, to be honest with you, Doc,” Aidan said. “Looking at this sword made me think the joon were at a higher tech level. These buildings don’t look far removed from the Dark Ages.”

“Maybe Tenth Century, give them a bit more credit. Thing is, you’re assuming the universality of Earth’s experience with scientific development, that improvements of technology must necessarily follow the path our societies did. The building techniques and architecture–on this side of the Wall, at least–may be Tenth Century, but as you noted, metallurgy and sword-making are more nearly Sixteenth Century.”

Aidan thought about it, then nodded. “Okay, I can accept that. Biology must play some part. I mean, just look at that body shape. It is absolutely foregone that they’d employ a thrusting weapon. They probably never bothered with edged blades for combat, always fought with the point.”

He couldn’t decide if the look Yuschenkov gave him was one of surprise, respect, or dawning comprehension. Or maybe the doctor was remembering Samuel Johnson’s line about preaching women and dogs walking on their hind legs.

A millrace, rushing near the brim of its banks, cut across the street, spanned by a wooden footbridge. Alongside, constructed more completely of stone than the other buildings, bulked a structure with a tall chimney billowing smoke. A water wheel turned briskly in the stream, the shaft disappearing into the building.

“The smithy,” Yuschenkov said. “Turns out high quality tools as well as sword blades and javelin heads. Excellently tempered steel.”

“That water wheel though, is that your contribution?”

“Well, they were still relying on muscle power to work the bellows. I suggested a simple upgrade. They figured out immediately how to use it to power the trip hammer, stole my thunder.”

The next section of town looked to be a commercial district: artisans’ workshops, bakeries, tailors. Aidan had to admit that there was nothing dour, nothing smacking of the Dark Ages about these buildings. Simple in construction, yes, but colorful. Each edifice sported multiple colors in widely differing patterns, the polychromatic displays running riot above the front door, but still impressively vibrant everywhere else.

“All the colors of the rainbow,” Aidan said.

“And then some,” Yuschenkov said. “You and me, we see primary colors, maybe with some variations: dark blue, blue, light blue. Painters and designers recognize a lot more. But joon, they see shades the human eye can’t differentiate. Take a gander all around you. I know it doesn’t look it, but you’re looking at Times Square. Joon writing is color based. Those congested bits of color above the lintels, those are signs, adverting the specialty of the house. ‘We sell cloth here.’ That sort of thing. The colors adorning the rest of the buildings tend to be a sort of pun, or wordplay, when it isn’t simply decoration.”

“Can you read it?”

“After twenty years I’ve at least got the basics. But I’m physically incapable of comprehending all of it. Some nuances I simply can’t see. Someone can point to a spot of color, tell me ‘see, right there, it clearly says mosey, not walk.’ But all I see is green-yellow-green. The joon see, I don’t know, some sort of green-chartreuse-emerald. They can show me the two words side by side and I can’t make out any difference.”

“Good thing neither of us is color-blind,” Aidan said.

Shoppers and workers stopped their activities to stare as the three travelers walked by. Aidan felt the gazes as an almost physical force.
Get used to it
, he thought.

Ahead rose the tallest structure in the village, a timber structure rearing up three stories.

Checkok pointed and spoke.

“Your house,” Aidan said, not waiting for the translation. The Esaul’s home reminded Aidan to some extent of a Viking longhouse and to some extent it called to mind Shogun-era Japanese fortresses, in both cases on a smaller scale.

“It is a sort of one-stop administrative center,” Yuschenkov said. “Feast hall and City Hall, all rolled into one. Checkok lives there. It is big enough to house his–well, let’s call them knights–for an indefinite period. Council meetings convene there. What passes for court is held there. And, tonight at least, it is a guest hostel.”

“Home sweet home,” Aidan said as the walls of Checkok’s hall loomed above him. He tried to take it all in, not only get a feel for his new home town, but to will himself to feel a positive, possessive, even protective attitude for Girdled-by-Fields. He wanted to begin his exile in the right frame of mind. But he couldn’t pull it off. The reality, the finality that he had been fighting was beginning to overcome him. About the only thing preventing him from running in search of a bolt hole and curling up into a fetal position was not wishing to look foolish in front of strangers. He wanted to retain the good opinion of his two companions.

He took a deep breath and let Checkok usher him through the fifteen-foot high doors.

* * *

Aboard the
Yuschenkov
, Brooklynn Vance was feeling unexpectedly positive. She’d woken refreshed and over coffee in the galley she pondered why. The failure of the mission, the deaths, the crew adrift in space–all of it lay at her doorstep. Her doing. At times, as the actuality sank in, the guilt had threatened to cripple her, and she had wanted to run to her cabin, curl up in a fetal position. She had tried to rationalize, to justify. Convince herself by logic that none of it was her fault. That the crew were all volunteers, and every one of them had come aboard without illusions. Y-Drive failure was beyond her control. Thorson’s actions were his responsibility. He’d disobeyed orders.

The trouble was that such rationalizations were a cop-out. Finishing her coffee, she realized she had accepted that, had ceased all attempts to pass the buck. She had replaced guilt with responsibility. That left her with problems to manage, not guilt to wallow in.

So it was with renewed purpose that she paid a visit to the infirmary.

“How’s the patient?” she asked, addressing both Doctor Roberts and Gordon Foster.

Foster was sitting up in bed, a wristband monitor transmitting his vitals to a monitor on the wall. Grace Roberts was jotting notes on her datapad.

“Fit for duty by tomorrow,” Doctor Roberts said. “Don’t you agree, Gordon?”

“Earlier, if needed,” said Foster, sounding chagrined. “Look, Captain, I’m sorry. I –”

“You don’t need to explain, Foster. Traumatic events can lead us to make poor decisions.”

“Yeah, but it was selfish. Stupid and selfish. We’re shorthanded already. Look, I know I don’t need to explain, but I want to clear it up, get back to work with a clean conscience.”

Vance sat. It seemed the one thing they did have was time. She could hear Foster out before tackling the next problem.

“You may have noticed, Captain, that I’m not really comfortable with people. ‘Social phobia,’ they call it, I think. I was only at ease with machines. Joining your crew was ideal for me. Few people, a lot of time with only the engines for company. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. Then all this happened. I started to think that there wouldn’t be a need for me to maintain or repair anything, that we’d just wait here to die. Keeping each other company. I couldn’t stand the thought of that, that kind of, I don’t know, shared misery.

“Sounds pretty stupid when I say it out loud. But it was too much. Anxiety on top of hopelessness.”

“It isn’t hopeless, Foster,” Vance said.

“I know that now, Captain. I’m really sorry. You can absolutely count on me.”

Vance stood. “I know I can. Get some rest, then tomorrow get your ass in gear and help Park.”

Doctor Roberts followed her out into the hall. “A day of bed rest and he’ll be fine,” she said. “The puncture wounds were superficial, and the toxins are nearly flushed out. You did good work yesterday. You’ve got promise as a nurse.”

“Given how I’ve done as a ship’s captain, maybe I should consider a career change,” Vance said, and held up a hand to forestall Doctor Roberts’ response. “No, don’t buck me up. Don’t tell me I’m doing great. That was simply self-deprecating humor. I’m fine, really. I’m off to the command center. See you at dinner.”

A
IDAN RETAINED FEW MEMORIES OF HIS
initial view of the interior of the Esaul’s Hall. Whitewashed plank walls rose above cut stone block foundations to smoke-darkened beams far above in the gloom. Where the hall was partitioned into three stories spread smaller chambers, accessed through woven curtains rather than solid doors. He recalled a brief meal attended by dozens of curious joon faces. He remembered Doctor Yuschenkov saying his goodbyes. Then he remembered a somewhat lumpy mattress and a warm cover. After that he remembered nothing for a long time.

He woke, thrashing free of a woven blanket. He stared around him, taking in the low, beamed ceiling and the whitewashed walls of a tiny cell of a room. The bed–a frame only about a foot off the floor, not quite long enough to accommodate Aidan stretched to his full length–was the only furniture. A bronze basin and a pitcher full of water rested on colorful rugs next to Aidan’s clothes and gear. A small brass lamp, like something he’d want to rub to release a djinni, sat cold and dead next to the door curtain, the low light illuminating the chamber leaking from underneath.

Memory ambushed him. He dropped back supine, gazing at blackened iron brackets securing the intersection of two beams. He was in Checkok’s house. Checkok the joon, the alien. He was on a moon circling a planet forty light years from Earth. And he was stuck here.

Aidan’s arm itched. He saw that someone had replaced the dressing on his wound with a cloth bandage. He wondered idly what plant fibers they used for cloth, for the elaborate carpets, door hangings, and blankets. What was the Ghark equivalent of cotton? Or, for that matter, wool?

His stomach alerted him that it had been a long time between meals.

He swung his legs out from beneath the cover and placed his feet on the floor. The joon-sized bed made him feel as if he had passed out at a party back on Earth and had been put to sleep in the kid’s room.

He poured some water in the basin and washed his face and neck. He picked up his clothes, sniffed. Decided he would definitely want to look into a loaner outfit while he had this one washed.

As Aidan dressed, he heard a pounding on the wall beyond the door curtain.

“Come in,” he said, thinking that he needed to start picking up the local lingo.

“As long as you’re decent,” came Doctor Yuschenkov’s voice, followed by Yuschenkov himself.

“Good morning, Doc,” Aidan said, lacing up his boots.

“Morning? Aidan, you’ve slept through half of the afternoon.”

“That would explain the hunger.”

“The evening meal is just two or three hours away, but let’s see about getting you something to tide you over. And let’s see about getting you a change of clothes and a bath. Whew! You are getting ripe, Aidan.”

A bath and several stalks of what Yuschenkov described as a type of dried fruit refreshed Aidan considerably. His clothes were still damp, line-drying near the large wooden tub Aidan had bathed in. He supposed it was normally used as a sort of communal clothes-washing tub or for some similar purpose, as it was much too large for joon bathing purposes. He had watched joon working in tandem to fill it, the pots of steaming water toted from fire to tub too heavy and cumbersome for any single joon. He tugged on a borrowed pair of joon pants, a baggy, draw-string affair that fit him like culottes. His camo jacket covered his torso and he wore a pair of Yuschenkov’s sandals.

“You certainly smell better,” Yuschenkov said.

“I’ve traveled a long way to learn that much of the shit I wanted to leave behind on Earth turns out to be universal. It’s good to know that a warm bath is also a, what should I call it...?”

“A universal palliative?” Yuschenkov said.

“Yeah, that. So, a couple hours before chow? Do I have time to see the sights?”

“Sure. Come on, I’ll drive the bus and show you where all the celebrities live.”

Yuschenkov led Aidan out onto the streets and pointed out the Girdled-by-Fields landmarks and amenities. Aidan didn’t change his mind regarding the primitive technology and living conditions. But he was impressed by the cleanliness and relative comfort the joon managed despite their mechanical limitations. He saw little privation. Even the joon at the outlying farmhold he’d seen yesterday hadn’t appeared in danger of starvation.