His silence was sudden and complete. It was all she was getting out of him. Small talk had failed; her alternative interview technique, beating the crap out of the interviewee, was out of the question. She decided to save her questions until she met the community leaders. Sam was just the gofer.
There were no people in the streets, and few sounds except the distant wail of a baby. She wondered if she were walking through an elaborate ruin. But there were lavender-flowered vines crawling up the walls towards the light, and the feel of life. She couldn’t smell anything through the biohaz filter, and yet she could almost taste fresh air.
Whatever technology they had, its results were impressive for such a small colony. She stared at the circular windows and arched doorways, imagining a souk of sorts.
And there it was ahead of her.
A church.
In an underground chamber, trillions of miles from Earth, a traditional Norman-style church rose up out of the rock floor with a spire that dissolved into the light above.
“Oh my,” she said.
“St. Francis. Out of the living rock.”
On closer inspection the huge church was relatively modest. It had no elaborate stone ornamentation, and from the outside its stained glass looked like a craft class’first efforts. A block of stone set in the wall near the doors bore an inscription: GOVERNMENT WORK IS GOD’S WORK..
The entrance was a tunnel of round arches, and along the walls the space between them was taken up with a narrow wooden bench. She walked through behind Sam, an alien in a space suit, wandering into a church. From outside herself, she could see how bizarre it looked. The cool darkness swallowed her and her eyes took time to adjust again.
What she saw revised her opinion of the glass. The leading, whatever it was, made no sense from the outside, but with the sun streaming in the images and colors were breathtaking. There were curious opal-white areas that looked as if someone had run out of ideas for halos: apart from that, the human figures—out of biblical stories, she imagined—were exquisite. Pools of brilliant emerald and violet and ruby were beginning a slow, majestic sweep across the altar.
“Josh,” Sam called out, in a strained loud whisper. “It’s the task force.”
So that was how they were seen. And maybe he was right. She had a problem: she was here with a handful of aid troops—nominally, anyway—and commercially sponsored researchers, in a world where the inhabitants clearly needed no aid and probably wanted no research.
Josh bobbed out from behind a pillar and stood staring at her. He held a small plant tub in one hand and a bunch of pink and white hellebores in the other. No, they were artificial; very realistic, but they were paper. She noticed that before she truly noticed Josh. He was a broad and very lean man, leaner than most humans she was used to: forties maybe, wiry light hair, very pale blue eyes, a man whom other men would probably have liked to resemble. His clothing was the same utilitarian buff fabric as Sam’s, except the top buttoned up like a frock coat.
“Commander,” he said politely. He put the tub down and held out his hand for shaking.
She took it as firmly as she could in her glove, and tried again. “Superintendent. I’m a police officer. Good to meet you.”
“I’m sorry we asked you to come alone,” he said. “We don’t want to appear hostile. But we didn’t plan on having visitors from home, and it’s a shock to have our first contact with troops.”
“I can understand that now,” she said, and meant it. All the forces of secular enforcement were soldiers to him. “I apologize. We could have done this better.”
“You’ve come a long way. We need to do some talking.”
“If I’ve interrupted something important, I can wait.” She was stepping gingerly from one cracking slab of conversational ice to another, never sure when she would fall in. “Busy?”
Josh held out the flowers for inspection. She put out a hand to touch them but the suit made the exercise pointless. The restriction was irritating her.
“Hellebores,” he said. “We have real holly as well, but the trees are too large now to bring them inside. We wouldn’t cut them just for decoration, of course.”
“They’re very realistic.” She longed to scratch between her shoulders. “Look, how long will it take for you to analyze the blood samples?”
“We’re processing them now. I promise you it won’t take long.”
At least it proved they’d retained some level of sophisticated technology if they could run a lab. Had they also developed that defense system? They’d had nearly two hundred years to do it. But she doubted it.
“Why don’t you sit here awhile?” Josh offered, as if she could have done anything else. “I’ll be back as soon as your own samples are cleared.”
Shan found herself alone in the church. It would have been a serene experience if the suit helmet hadn’t amplified her breathing. She concentrated on the rise and fall of her chest and settled into a shallow rhythm. Colored light from the window edged across her lap, picking out the monitor panels and seals. It was hypnotic.
A saint surrounded by animals hung motionless in light before her. She read the words on a scroll at his feet: “It is Satan and his henchmen who martyr animals.” It was almost wiccan. She knew Josh wouldn’t have agreed.
Shan woke with a start, heart pounding. Josh was standing over her. He smiled and tapped his head. “You can take that off—you’re clear,” he said. “Sorry I startled you.”
She broke the seal with relief. The air that rushed in was wood-scented and slightly damp, underlaid by unidentifiable smells that reminded her of fruit as they hit her palate. “That’s better,” she said. “I nodded off. I think my metabolism is still screwed from the cryo. So, no bugs?”
“Some, but nothing we can’t handle. Come on. I’ll show you the town.”
She followed him back down the nave, relieved to be getting out, like a burglar who had lost her nerve. Treading on other people’s sacred soil always disturbed her. She paused to look up at the fine stained glass again.
“That’s quite a sight.”
“I’m told the translucent areas are actually the most wonderful blues and mauves,” Josh said. “But not to human eyes.” He looked suddenly awkward, and turned away. Was he talking about the vision of angels? Perault’s voice intruded from the dead past: We know they made contact with aliens. She decided not to ask, not yet.
It seemed indecent to take off the rest of her suit in the church. When she reached the porch she struggled free of it, draping it over one arm. She could feel a slight but steady breeze on her face—artificial, she imagined—and a heady mix of cooking smells that she couldn’t quite identify beyond garlic and ginger.
“I’ll walk you round the main parts of town, so you get your bearings,” he said. “It’ll take awhile. We don’t use vehicles much. Are you able to walk?”
“I’ll get used to the gravity,” she said, and noted that Josh was a head shorter when she drew level with him. He could still walk faster, though: it would take her a few weeks to get used to weighing an extra seven kilos. They walked up the long sloping road to the surface, passing windows that spilled brilliant light. There was so much of it. It seemed to burst out from underground, as if there were a sun at the heart of the world. Shan pointed at the sunken dwellings.
“Houses?” she asked, then tried the same question from a new tack. “Why are they like that?”
“Usual reason. Saves energy, lets in enough light,” Josh said. “And we do get some ferocious gales round here sometimes. What do you think of our church, then?”
“Very impressive.” She recalled the inscription, a boast from the days of the Raj, when Europeans occupied India. GOVERNMENT WORK IS GOD’S WORK. “A labor of love. Especially building it underground.”
“Local custom,” Josh said, a little awkwardly, and nothing more. He steered up a long ramp to the surface again. She looked back and found she could pick out the tops of submerged buildings catching light bu
t otherwise as buried as missile silos. “Manufacturing plant is down there. The bot gear has lasted pretty well, but we don’t use it all the time.”
The houses were more randomly dotted the farther they walked, and it was harder to spot them in the landscape because of that. It struck her that it might be a defensive precaution. If it were, then it was a defense against an airborne enemy who targeted by sight or by heat signature. Or maybe it was, after all, just a sensible way to build against the weather in this place.
“No unwelcome visitors?” she asked.
Josh’s voice changed again. He wasn’t very practiced at deception, that was for sure: she was on to something.
“Most of our visitors are very welcome,” he said. “Take a look at the doors when you visit one of our houses.”
Shan decided to drop the subject until later. It was the time for tourist questions about flora and fauna and weather. Whatever sore spot she kept touching, this was not the time to pick at it. And it was still not the time to ask about aliens.
She stood and looked out towards the horizon and saw a fertile land with a marbled blue moon hanging over it like a displaced Earth. And she saw a battlefield, too, because now there would surely be those who would want to leave Earth and come here. Not many would be able to make it, perhaps, but there would be enough of them to overwhelm the colony. It wasn’t a thought she wanted to put out of her mind. The Suppressed Briefing wouldn’t let her anyway. Perault’s voice spoke of the need to preserve the colonist’s mission.
Perault was almost certainly dead by now. The realization caught Shan unawares.
“The fields are out there,” Josh said, and brought her back to the here and now. The land sloped gently away from them, and she could pick out many little beige-clad figures scattered amid random patches of varied greens that abruptly gave way to the wild blues and ambers a long way in the distance. But fields meant horizon-stretching squares, one color per box, and lots of machinery. Her brain struggled to make sense of it.
“You’ll have to forgive me. I can’t tell what I’m looking at. I can’t see boundaries.”
“There aren’t any. We plant in small patches and combinecrops. We were persuaded against monoculture. There’s a lot of soy down there, and wheat.”
“I’m impressed that you can grow crops in the open.”
“We can now.” Again, that slight pause before answering: maybe he had some biotech that he didn’t want the commercial team stealing. “We can grow a great deal, some above ground, some below in hothouses.”
“Is that a uniform, this beige?”
“No, but we don’t bother to dye work clothes. Indulgent trivia.” Josh pulled his coat out with both hands like an apron. “It’s the natural color of the hemp fiber.”
“You’re big on environmental protection, then.” The Suppressed Briefing filtered into her conscious mind again: They took the world’s most complete archive of plant and animal specimens with them. “I think we have a great deal in common. Heard of EnHaz?”
“No.”
“Environmental Hazard Enforcement. It’s a police function. It’s what I do. Or at least it’s what I do now.”
“It’s commendable that people from your time treat despoiling the natural world for the crime it is.”
From your time. Ah, that stung. Yes, she was dead as far as everyone she had ever known was concerned, killed by the one-way ticket of distance and time. She had a feeling that realization would start to eat at her.
“And I won’t allow your world to be despoiled, either.” Poor Josh: he had his little paradise and now the secular, grasping, exploitative world had come bursting in on him. He had a right to be edgy. She began wondering how she would contain the research team.
By the time she had completed the circuit of the main settlement, her legs were demanding that she stop. She was wheezing; her eyes and nose watered with the effort. It was going to take some time to adjust to higher gravity and lower oxygen. A rotten combination, she thought, but as habitable planets went it was a remarkably close match to home. It wasn’t methane and she was still able to lift her legs. Yes, it was close enough.
Josh led her down steps and into a subterranean hall of sand-gold stone. It was solidly quiet except for distant birdsong. The walls curved round her, and there appeared to be rooms off a hall that was large enough to accommodate seating and tables. It seemed to be the hub of a wheelshaped house.
Paper chains in muted colors hung in swags round the top of the walls, and there were those paper flowers everywhere. Some—less wonderful, less realistic—were evidently the painstaking work of a small child. There was no Christmas tree. But a waist-high plant in a large ceramic pot was decked with tiny glass globes in a riot of colors. Glassmaking was evidently the big art activity here.
“I take your point about insulation,” Shan said. “This is very peaceful.” She craned her neck up to the domed skylight, which took up the entire width of the roof. It was slightly opaque, and gave a soft shadowless light. “Is this carved into rock too?”
“Part rock, part soil. The facing is compacted earth. We sealed it with a sort of chalk.” He busied himself at a side table. “We have wine. Would you like some?”
She bit back her automatic refusal. “Yes,” she said at last, concentrating hard on diplomacy. “I’d love a glass. Thank you.”
She sat down on a padded bench at the table and watched him pour from a ceramic bottle. Courtesy told her not to examine the wine’s color too closely. The glass that held it was shot with opaque swirls and would have disguised all visible shortcomings. It smelled faintly of raspberries and mint, and although it triggered half-memories that she couldn’t pin down she knew they were genuinely distant, not obscured by neurotransmitter markers. She allowed herself a small sip. It was actually very pleasant wine, and the glass was beautiful. She thought glassware would be her lasting memory of Constantine. It was a transparent sort of place.
“What are your plans?” Josh asked.
“If you don’t need assistance, we’ll just carry out some surveys and perhaps catalog some of the flora and fauna.” The birdsong was beginning to distract her for some reason. “With your consent.”
“I’ll discuss that with the council,” Josh said. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem with your people looking around. But we can’t let you take anything that’s alive.”
Shan paused. Constantine had its own values and rules, forged over centuries of isolation from human society. As taboos went, the request was at the pale end of harmlessness.
“Josh, do you have an ethical problem with native botanical samples?”
“As I said, nothing alive.”
She should have expected that. She hadn’t. “Okay. Can they use any non-invasive techniques? Scans?”
“You’re welcome to look around, and to learn. Stay awhile. But you mustn’t interfere with this world, and you can’t stay here.”
“Don’t worry. We’re all planning on going home. And we’ll respect the fact that this is your world.”
“Not our world. Remember, we’re all guests here.”
“I won’t lose sight of that.”
“Would you like to stay for dinner? Many people will want to see you. Perhaps you would come to midnight Mass, too. I will understand if you find that inappropriate.”
“Paganism teaches tolerance, Josh. I’m not offended by difference. Ere it harm none, do as thou wilt.” She gestured with the glass as if she was really intending to drink it. The first rule of diplomacy was never to refuse food and drink; the second was to genuflect to the local deity. She could see no harm in being polite. “Just explain one thing for me.”
“I’ll try.”
“I can hear birdsong. I shouldn’t be able to, should I?”
“Blackbirds,” Josh said.
“From the gene bank?”
“No, it’s a recording. Our forefathers missed birdsong most of all. Now, would you think me rude if I left you here for a while?
I have to go and check on the flowers for the service. Help yourself to the wine. The kitchen’s over there.”
Shan shifted uncomfortably on her seat. “And the bathroom?”
“That way.”
Either she had earned his trust or he had nothing worth stealing. That degree of naivety was as alien to her as the autumn-spring trees, but she confined herself automatically to hall and bathroom. It seemed churlish to help herself in someone else’s kitchen even when invited.
Thetis warranted a sitrep call, but that could wait until she had a tighter grip on her thoughts. She held the glass up to the light and admired the changing patterns and colors. Shame about the wine. She felt guilty peering down the stark lavatory bowl—opaque white glass, more a urinal than anything—to check that it was a safe place to dispose of the alcohol. Booze didn’t fit into the working day, especially with a headful of SB. She found the flush button and watched the wine disappear.
The nonexistent blackbirds trilled. Constantine was beginning to feel good. It was certainly a town of craftsmen and -women who loved their workmanship, and it showed in the furniture and walls. The doors were perfectly planed.She ran her hand up and down the material—wood or composite?—and smiled at their smoothness.
And she noticed, after a while, that none of them had locks.
6
We protest at arrival of alien ship in our territory. We tell you we not tolerate more colonization of land that is claimed ours. You will remove and allow us to enter.
Isenj legate to Bezer’ej sector,
in a message to Fersanye clans
There had never been any need for maps. The bezeri had them, of course, but the detail was in the waters, not on the land. Aras still had an original bezeri chart, a lovely thing in colored sand pressed tightly between two glass-clear slices of azin shell. The green areas were peppered with swirls of depth markings and the gathering points of clans, named in light and color. But the mass of information ended at the brown areas, the Dry Above, the land masses unknown and largely irrelevant to the water-dwelling bezeri.