Читать книгу Triad - Sheila Finch - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

Just let this last one be as uneventful as all the rest.

Lil Cheng gripped the controls against the familiar bump of landing—a bad habit she’d never managed to break in thirty years of occasionally piloting a shuttle. Which was probably why they’d kicked her upstairs to skipper the freighter where she could do less damage.

The experience with the wreck had left her edgy. She’d spent two hours on the bridge afterward while Sky Selele queried CenCom. But the Central Computer back on Earth knew nothing about the alien ship or its fate. And it hadn’t been willing to speculate. “Is it worth the risk for us?” she’d asked. “A few baubles in exchange for our lives, if whoever slaughtered that ship comes hunting?” She failed to be reassured when CenCom refused to cancel their mission.

Carli Alvez had come up with what seemed the only solution under the circumstances. Anyone monitoring the area would expect to see one ship on their screens, not two.

So the trick was to hide the Ann Bonny as close to the wreck as possible without triggering any more of the defense systems that might still be operational. Now the two ships rode in uneasy tandem high over Ithaca 3-15d. But anything more than a casual scan would reveal the presence of the living ship in the shadow of the dead one.

Mosquito rocked as the mud under one metal pad gave way, then settled. The door slid open, and the ramp unrolled to the floor of the clearing. In the tangled branches of a clump of tall, spindly, gray trees, which looked like a group of gaunt old women embracing each other, a cacophony of sounds broke out. She saw no movement outside, except for the lazy whirr of a very large lead-colored insect that bumped against the shuttle’s side with mindless patience.

Dori Tsing slapped away the curious insect. “Look at the size of these things!”

Rain came pattering down through huge silver-gray leaves. The Commerce Agent hunched her shoulders and went down. Lil followed, limping. The hip joint stiffened if she sat too long. She’d be glad to get back to the advanced medical facilities on Earth and take care of it.

Gray, everywhere she looked. Even the mud had a gray cast to it. Perhaps it was only a trick of the light reflected from the heavy storm clouds above the clearing. She didn’t remember seeing a monochromatic planet before—and she’d seen plenty, though none quite as exotic as she’d once dreamed they’d be, years ago when she was just starting out. Now she didn’t want this last trip to be exciting, didn’t want any surprises at this late date.

There was something ominous about that wreck—

She couldn’t get it out of her mind. Had it been there the first time they came to this planet? Possibly—coming in along the plane of the ecliptic, they could easily have missed it on the other side of the world. They’d done some scouting, but they hadn’t been looking for anything else in orbit.

“Have the sonic stunner ready,” Dori said.

“These life forms are harmless.”

“Set the stunner anyway. You want to make it to retirement, don’t you?”

“Relax. This is our lucky spot, remember?”

On that first trip, the Ann Bonny, nursing damage received when she strayed into a dispersed but still dense molecular cloud their scanners had somehow not picked up, had been fortunate enough to find this small planet orbiting an aging G-type star. It hadn’t been on the charts. But obviously someone had known about it—to their cost. Who had they been? She thought back to all the alien races she’d met over the years, but couldn’t remember any of them having ships like that one. Nor had CenCom been able to identify it so far.

Lil glanced around the clearing. The scouting party on the first trip had reported only one large species, probably intelligent, but they’d seemed peaceful enough—unlikely candidates to destroy spaceships. And if they weren’t the alien ship’s attacker, could they be what was being defended? She found it strange that CenCom hadn’t ordered at least a delay in their mission while they gathered more data. It wasn’t like the computer to send them into possible jeopardy.

Where were the native creatures now, she wondered, shielding her eyes with one hand against the fine drizzle.

“Ugly mudball planet!” the Commerce Agent muttered.

The first time they were here, some of the crew had filled their pockets with the crude wooden beads the apparently friendly aliens had offered. Turned in for inspection as a routine precaution in Homeport, the things had been quickly forgotten. But then CenCom had changed the orders on their next run. Instead of the rare metals and drugs they usually traded in, it sent them back to gather artifacts. The Commerce Agent wasn’t the only member of the crew to be disgruntled; Lil’s own protests had been overridden. And CenCom never wasted time explaining its decisions.

“The sooner we load the junk, the sooner we can get offworld,” Lil said.

And go home to my little apartment in Geneva— She was dreaming of it at night now, the snowy mountain sloping up behind her, the lake a sapphire glitter at her feet, the Academy where she’d teach again. If only it proved to be that simple. Load up, find out what the natives wanted in return, get the Sagittans to approve the contract, and go home.

Only it rarely happened that way. The catch was the trade contract. Damned Sagittans, anyway. Life had been simpler before humans had broken out of the cocoon of the solar system and attracted their attention.

Perhaps the wreck had been a trader too.

When she’d been younger, she might have enjoyed a puzzle like this. Now it was just too much trouble. Instinct warned her that she should have defied CenCom and fled home empty-handed, and damn the repercussions.

Gia Kennedy, youngest member of the crew, hesitated at the bottom of the ramp. Remembering her own first trip, Lil smiled. There was something awe-inspiring about setting one’s foot for the first time on alien soil. Unfortunately, one grew accustomed to it very fast.

“No bad effects from yesterday, I hope?”

Gia shook her head. “I’m fine—hardly even a bruise.”

“Where the hell are the aliens?” Dori interrupted.

The Commerce Agent was moving under the skinny metal-colored trees, peering into the dim interiors of caves formed by high arching roots that twisted and braided themselves about each other. She reminded Lil of a bird picking its way distastefully over the mud. Gia followed Dori, and they stood together under a tree whose trailing, big-leaved branches, draped with strands of stringy gray moss, provided a curtain against the rain.

“Are you sure this is the right spot?” Dori pulled a small notebox from her pocket and turned it on.

Already Lil’s gold-striped tunic was soaked and clinging uncomfortably to her skin. She pulled it away from her ribs and grimaced at the fold of fat that met her fingers. Well, when she got home to Geneva, perhaps she’d feel inspired to do something about that too.

“Breaking the language shouldn’t take too long,” Gia said solemnly. “At first I’ll use the rec channel and take lots of samples. Then HANA and I’ll analyze and find some key patterns. We’ll soon be communicating.”

Lil saw how the LangSpec’s hand drifted to the spot under her short dark hair where the computer link must be embedded in her brain, and wondered if the girl could actually feel it. What must it be like, never being free of HANA’s nagging presence?

“You think so?” Impatience flickered in Dori’s words.

Gia nodded. “Well enough to make a trade agreement. It doesn’t have to be too complex, does it?”

“This isn’t your safe little classroom. All Nteko got when we were here before was a lot of noise.” Dori made no attempt to conceal her dislike.

“But that’s how a lingster starts,” Gia explained earnestly, flushing. “All aural languages are fundamentally a patterned, segmented, and rhythmed code of vocal signals.”

“That’ll help a lot!”

“We have to begin with a description of sounds. Meanings come later. But I—I think I can do it.”

Lil frowned. She prided herself on her ability to judge people, but perhaps that was another thing that was slipping away with age, like muscle tone and supple joints. This kid looked competent enough, and she’d come highly recommended. And there hadn’t been time after Nteko’s accident to find a more experienced xenolinguist.

The notebox gave off a sudden, high-pitched whine, quickly silenced. The noise startled the grove’s aerial community. The creatures—they could loosely be called “birds,” Lil thought, though their wings were scale-covered rather than feathered—rose into the air with a riot of indignant voices. They wheeled over the humans, a shifting kaleidoscope of smoky grays, pearl and silver. Large drops of rain splattered down from the vacated branches, some of them catching Dori’s upturned face.

“Shit!” Dori wiped them away with her sleeve.

“What a magnificent display of bad humor.” Zion Marit stood at the top of the ramp, gazing at the shifting patterns of the wheeling creatures.

“Nice to have the leisure to be amused!” Dori snapped.

Lil had no idea what CenCom hoped to accomplish by sending an artist—especially a male—along on a freighter. She caught his eye over the bent heads of the other two and smiled. He was bright and witty, and there were some advantages to his presence that the computer probably hadn’t expected.

Zion winked at her and moved away with the easy grace of an athlete, his reddish-brown hair already darkening in the rain. He stopped a few paces from the mouth of one of the cave-like clumps of trees and let his gaze travel up to the dark crown a hundred meters above. The aerial creatures had settled down again and silence filled the clearing, a waiting silence broken only by the fitful patter of rain and Dori’s murmured conversation with Gia. Zion moved toward them. The dark-haired lingster had her back toward him.

Dori broke off in mid-sentence. “You might as well make yourself useful....”

Gia turned. Her foot slipped sideways in the unstable mud, and she flung her arms wide to regain her balance. Her left hand was about to strike the mud when he reached out and grabbed her other elbow, catching her in time.

“Don’t touch me!”

Lil stared at the girl’s flushed face. Gia pulled away from the man as if he’d struck her instead of saved her from a tumble in the mud.

Zion removed his fingers from Gia’s arm. “I thought you were falling, LangSpec Kennedy,” he said, coolly formal.

“Just don’t touch me.” Gia’s voice was barely above a whisper. She brushed the blue sleeve of her uniform as if contact with his fingers had somehow soiled the bright turquoise stripe.

If Gia had any unexpected phobias about men, they might be in for an uncomfortable time. Again, apprehension prickled along Lil’s spine.

Might as well fill in time looking around, she decided. She moved off toward a grotesque clump of intertwined roots that ended in jagged stumps. As if they’d been beheaded, she thought with a shiver. But that was silly. In all her years in space, she’d never been edgy about new worlds before. It had nothing to do with the planet; it was that damned wreck that was bothering her.

Up close now, she saw that the stumps sported bizarre shapes of fungus. She could see resemblance to faces, colonies of animals, cathedral-like structures. But the fungus too was gray.

Zion would be interested. She turned to call his attention to the growths and found she couldn’t see him. The clearing was empty, as if the others had quietly stolen away and left her here alone. At its edges, the dense forest waited silently, the birds and insects mute. Now the rain lanced down with sudden, animal ferocity, stinging her bare face and hands, and obliterating the clearing.

Lil knew a sudden, unreasoning fear.

“Zion?” She was ashamed of the tremor she heard in her voice. “Where the hell are you?”

The noise of the rain drowned her words.

She sloshed through the descending wall of water, a growing panic pushing her. They couldn’t have gone far. But what if something had happened? She shouldn’t have left them.

All at once, the rain stopped.

A warbling birdlike sound rippled out from the leaves overhead, peculiarly liquid, like water splashing in a marble basin. She stared up. Gracefully, a slight figure lowered itself from the branches until it hung swaying at the end of long, slender arms. Then it dropped to the ground, its prehensile toes splayed for balance in the slippery mud. It was followed by another, then another, until six of them stood before her. Warily, on guard now, she looked at them.

They weren’t the first aliens she’d seen, though they might be her last. There’d been dozens, though only a handful of intelligent ones—some a little less intelligent than humans, some a little more—and no super races. Would these creatures fit the pattern? They had faces that were uncannily human, though blunter and displaying a fine downy hair that gleamed like wet silver. They had a shoulder-length mane and round, steel-gray eyes; their bodies were covered with a pelt of the silvery fur. They reached no higher than Lil’s shoulder.

“Great Mother!” a voice exclaimed. “They’re like a bunch of primis!”

Dori stood, her hand on a curtain-like vine, staring at the aliens. Behind her, Lil could see Gia and Zion. Just the dense vegetation, arid the blinding rain, she thought with relief. They’d not been far at all.

“Primates, certainly,” Zion said to Dori.

Lil turned back to the aliens. She hadn’t been in space for thirty years to miss the problem their humanoid appearance could cause. The difficulty of negotiating with aliens seemed to increase in inverse proportion to the similarity they bore to humans. She wasn’t exactly sure why.

The others came cautiously toward the aliens.

“Primates, primitives—what’s the difference?” Dori said.

Shafts of ruddy sunlight poked through the clouds and the ground steamed. In the rising mist, one of the aliens took Zion’s hands and raised them to touch its forehead. In turn, its companion stepped out and repeated the gesture. Zion returned the courtesy—if that was what it was—gravely taking the long-fingered hands in his and raising them to his bowed forehead. The aliens exclaimed among themselves in subdued, cooing sounds. Two of them reached up to touch Zion’s hair.

Now that her irrational fear had faded, Lil decided that the aliens were really pretty to look at, with a delicate grace and fluid, dance-like movements. If they’d only been more colorful. Moments like this made her wish she knew more about xenozoology.

The aliens resumed the stream of rather musical sound.

“Gia—your turn,” Dori said.

The LangSpec offered the silvery creature both hands as Zion had done. The ceremony was repeated once again. As soon as the last alien let go of Gia’s hands, Dori moved forward.

Did the alien hesitate for a fraction of a second before taking her Commerce Agents hands? Lil couldn’t be sure, for now they were bowing and touching as before. But Dori was frowning.

That left it up to her. One of them stood nearer than the rest, one hand resting lightly on Gia’s forearm, the other caressing Zion’s red hair. Lil felt the flutter of apprehension again. There was something spider-like about those long fingers—there was an extra joint, surely. She suppressed a shudder and held out her hands to the alien as she’d seen the others do. Mustn’t say alien, she remembered. That was a xenophobic word she’d known better than to use in almost three decades. Entity, the neutral Ent.

The Ent didn’t seem to notice her.

“Hello,” she said.

Nothing happened.

Lil edged between Gia and Zion and they moved away. The Ent stared at Lil, a dull silver gleam in its eyes.

Did any form of intelligence hide behind those eyes? She was compelled to say something even though she felt foolish.

“I’m the captain, Lil Cheng.”

The Ent reached out with long, sinuous arms, seizing both her hands in its own. It drew her forward, filling the air with liquid chatter. It lifted her hands to its brow, not once but over and over. Lil laughed. The alien made laughing sounds too, mimicking her. She bowed her head, acknowledging what seemed to be clearly a welcome. The Ents were simple and harmless—not the sort to build spaceships or destroy them. She’d been worrying needlessly.

The alien touched her hands to its brow again.

But—enough. It should let her go now. She was tiring of the ceremony and tried to pull away.

She found she couldn’t.

The strength of the creature’s grip shocked her. Now a second Ent was moving toward her, reaching for her. Nervously, she glanced up at her companions, wanting to get out of this. No one seemed aware of the problem. Gia appeared absorbed by the constant stream of sound the other four Ents uttered. Dori was talking to Zion, their backs turned to Lil.

The second alien touched her with its long gray-furred fingers. She saw the extra joint clearly. Its eyes looked steadily into hers, something secret moving in their depths. Then one eye tracked slowly to the left, past Lil, toward the dark edge of the forest, and the pupil widened; the other, narrow-slitted, transfixed her with its gaze.

Lil panicked. She jerked her hands in her captors’ grasp, twisting away. Her foot slid from under her on the slick surface.

As she went down, the Ent wrenched her arm sideways, so that she crashed awkwardly to the ground.