Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera, page 20
Perhaps in the far future our descendents will meet again. Until that day, I wish you well.
June 7, 2148
“Oh my God” said Aiyana “it was the Techs!”
Carson sighed. “Now it’s obvious. They wanted to found a new colony but they were stealing an empty starship. Sakyamuni was one of the dissidents – and he knew exactly where all the supply dumps were located. Like Samuelson says, they were desperate for material, they had to stop here to pick up everything.”
He grinned at Aiyana. “I bet they also cleared out the stuff in cometary orbit. Just as well we didn’t weeks thrashing around deep space searching for it. But this…”
His voice trailed off as he stared at the glass tablet.
“There is nothing like this, is there?”
“When they fled New Earth the Techs just vanished. No-one has ever found the slightest trace of what happened to them.”
“Until now”
Carson gestured at the tablet “do you realize that in a few years time there will be lines a hundred meters long at the Archives Museum to see this?”
“Why’s it made of glass?”
“It’s incredibly stable. We’ve seen what time can do to a recording media.”
“I thought it was a super-viscous liquid, eventually it just flowed away.”
Carson shook his head. “That’s a myth. Samuelson was a scientist, he knew what he was doing.”
“Well, Juro was not expecting this.”
“I guess not” Carson said as he re-closed the case “but he never did let me listen to the third cassette – all I got was an edited transcript. Who knows what was really on it? Who knows what he’s really after?”
Early the following morning they made one final trip to the clearing to image the last six storage modules. After reading Samuelson’s message none of them expected to find anything but all agreed they had to try.
“How are you doing flying blind?” Carson asked the buggy. The machine’s sensors were still attached to the improvised imaging system.
“No problem, I’m following Tallis’s radio beacon.”
They traveled on for a few minutes.
“Radio beacon!” Carson shouted.
They found it perched on the rocks above the clearing, a battered grey cylinder wedged between two boulders. The outer casing was deeply corroded from eight thousand years of exposure but astonishingly the inner workings appeared to be intact.
“They must have built it to take a beating” said Aiyana. “What are those square things?”
“They’re called solar panels. They generate electricity from daylight. It probably kept transmitting for decades.”
“Wow! The one thing they left behind. Why would they take the location beacon? It was the supplies they were after.”
They stowed the ancient transmitter to the buggy and went through the chore of checking the last modules. To nobody’s surprise they were all empty. They agreed to take two – the one that had held Samuelson’s message and an unopened container to keep the preservationists happy.
By late afternoon they had packed away the camp and were heading to the ship. Mirama c shrank visibly as the acceleration ramped up.
“It’s good to be able to see again” said the buggy “it makes me wonder how Tallis functions.”
“We speculate same about humans and machines that have no sense of smell”
“I can smell” Aiyana objected.
“And we can distinguish [untranslatable] light and dark but you do not call that seeing.”
Carson was studying a facsimile of the glass tablet.
“Hey buggy, do you have an image of Samuelson?”
The face of a man in late middle age floated in front of them, his dark brown eyes glittering with intelligence.
“He could almost be Cissokho’s brother” Aiyana said.
“Yeah” said Carson “they were both of African origin, but it’s believed that Samuelson was born and raised in the North American Federation. Cissokho grew up in Botswana, though she spent most of her adult life in Greater China.”
“I thought she was born in Africa.”
“Africa was a continental landmass, not a political and cultural entity. The Book says that at one time there were over two hundred countries on Old Earth, though there were fewer by the time the Yongding was built.”
“Two hundred separate cultures on one planet! How did they all manage to get along?”
“They didn’t. Armed conflicts – they called them wars – were going on all the time.”
“Poor creatures”
“There were simply too many of them, thirteen billion at the end. They could all communicate instantaneously and travel anywhere on the planet in less than an hour. It must have been easy to get into a fight.”
“Imagine a conflict between cultures nowadays” Carson laughed “It would take weeks just to trade insults!”
“Is that why the Techs left New Earth, to avoid another war?”
Carson gazed at the stern face floating in the cabin.
“Maybe – we always thinks of the Techs stealing the Yongding as a crime, but perhaps Samuelson was right, it was the only peaceful way out. Where does that leave the last eight thousand years of history? Where does that leave us?”
The next day they met in the ship’s main cabin. Carson had repacked the priceless glass tablet and secured it in the safe that he used for his most treasured objects.
“So what should we do now? Tallis, Aiyana, ship – any suggestions?”
“I follow your scent”
“Me too” said the ship.
“What about you honey?”
“Oh come on” said Aiyana “this is your party. I just came along for the ride. What do you think we should do?”
“Well, we have one of the most unique historical artifacts ever discovered, plus some great pieces of Old Earth technology. The only responsible thing to do is to head straight to New Earth and hand them all over to the Archives Council.”
“Hey ship” Aiyana yelled “is your Carson to Aiyana auto-translator working today? Would you care to interpret that last comment?”
The cabin echoed with fake mechanical noises.
“Message reads: let’s get the hell out of here and find the next supply dump”
“Exactly what I thought, you’d better start plotting a course.”
“Already locked and loaded” said the ship as Aiyana tousled Carson’s hair.
FALK
Ancient voices whispered in Carson’s ear as he drifted, eyes closed, through the darkened cabin. He was listening to the debates of the Covenant Convention recorded by Teng, ironically on the very same tapes that they had stolen from the archives. Ever since the revelation ten days ago that they were following the path of the stolen Yongding he had been scrambling to learn as much as he could about the Techs.
He was driven by more than curiosity. The key question was whether all the storage dumps had been emptied by the fleeing dissidents. Sakyamuni hinted that it had taken several voyages to distribute all the material. Perhaps the supplies left at each system represented the Yongding’s maximum cargo capacity. Not much was known about the ancient starship –just the one famous image of the vessel that appeared in every history of New Earth – but that was all. Perhaps the renegade colonists had filled their holds at Mirama and left the other dumps intact. Carson shivered with pleasure at the thought.
The Convention was coming to its climax – the arguments before the adoption of the Covenant. The traditional portrait of the Techs was that of a group of selfish rebels, but as he listened to the tapes a different picture was emerging. Samuelson had genuinely tried to find a compromise; in many ways it was Cissokho who was the hardliner. Suppose they had reached consensus, how different would the world have been? It was one of the great ‘what if’ questions of history.
Carson sighed and turned off the recording. They were two days from the Falk system, the next unlikely candidate for colonization chosen by the astronomers of Old Earth.
“At least the ship’s library says that this one has a complete ecosystem” he told Aiyana. Prior to Sakyamuni’s account neither of them had heard of the obscure world.
“Falk is an M class star – a red dwarf – so it will be a narrow habitable zone.”
“Won’t the planets be in tidal lock, one side always facing the sun?”
“It’s bigger than most of its kind – about a third of a standard solar mass – so Falk a won’t be too close, and it has a giant moon just like Old Earth. I guess that must help maintain rotation.”
“Oh hell” he said “there’s so little information. Let’s divide the workload, you research the planet and I’ll keep on investigating the Techs.”
But even with the ship’s vast resources Aiyana had not been able to find much more. The system was sparsely inhabited, although it was not part of the Commonwealth or any other alliance. As a consequence trade was virtually non-existent. Apparently, the people of Falk had turned their back on the outside world.
“This isn’t going to be easy” Carson said, “I would have preferred another empty planet.”
“It will do you good, you need to meet more people.”
She was right of course. Where was Aiyana? He had lost track of time listening to the recordings. Carson flexed his legs against sixth millennium gene editor and pushed his way across the cabin towards the conservatory. Predictably, she was lying in her favorite spot at the heart of the garden. Was she asleep? He pushed his way through the dense vegetation. She remained motionless as he emerged into the clearing. Aiyana’s body was as still as death, her naked skin crawling with Tallis’s workers. Oh God no! The scream died in his mind as she opened her eyes and smiled.
Shaking, Carson slumped onto the turf.
“There you are! Why are you looking like that?”
“It’s just that I thought… Oh, forget it. What the hell are you two doing?”
“Tallis was telling me that she had never come into physical contact with a human being, so I thought I should give her the opportunity.”
“It is [untranslatable]. So huge, so like a giant grub! Carson, are you the same?”
“Come on” said Aiyana “let her check you out as well.”
Muttering under his breath, Carson stripped off his flight suit and lay down beside her. He forced himself to stay still as a swarm of tiny feet moved across his skin.
“[Untranslatable]. This part is different!”
They both lay giggling as the examination continued.
Later on, when they were dressed and back in the main cabin, Aiyana explained Tallis’s perception of their roles.
“She thinks you must be a drone – you know, the male Ants whose only purpose is to service the queen. But she suspects you are defective, otherwise why don’t I get fertilized with all the mating?”
“She’s got me nailed” said Carson, then added “seriously, have you ever thought about having a child?”
“I suppose every woman has at some point in her life, but not yet. I want to be at least a hundred years old before making such a commitment. How about you?”
“Oh God no! Anyhow, I’d have to change sex first which is a tremendous hassle.”
“I think you’d make a great woman.”
“I gather that’s a compliment.”
“You bet it is” she said butting her body into his. “Maybe I’ll change sex at the same time. Imagine that!”
“The mind boggles.”
They spun laughing across the cabin.
“Well there it is” said the ship.
A silvery globe hovered in the cabin like a gigantic steel bearing.
“Nice imaging” said Carson.
“Thank Tallis – she built me an optical interferometer. I deployed it with the periscope.”
The ship had arrived at the inner edge of Falk’s Kuiper Belt twelve hours earlier. As soon as spin-down re-established contact with the universe the first order of business was to find out more about the reclusive planet.
Aiyana peered closer, the bluish light giving a metallic appearance to her skin.
“I can’t see any land – surely it’s not an ocean world.”
“No” said the ship “let me enhance the image.”
Thin diagonal strips of green appeared, as if a monstrous claw had shredded the continents.
“That’s one of the strangest landmass formations I’ve seen” said Carson “any idea why it’s shaped that way?”
“Erosion perhaps – being that close to the star must induce powerful tides. We should know more soon; I think I’m receiving a welcome package.”
“You’re not sure?”
“It’s encrypted, nothing too sophisticated” there was a pause “Okay – ready when you are.”
They gathered round a display.
To their surprise the welcome package was not published by the planet’s government but by the Commonwealth Consulate. He apologized for the encryption and explained that it “was in the best interests of discretion.”
“In other words, he’s going to say something rude” said Carson.
It transpired that the people of Falk were fundamentalists in a way that would have dismayed Cissokho and the framers of the Covenant. They did not believe in the slow technological progress pursued by the rest of the galaxy – they favored in no technological progress. In fact they had deliberately regressed and the Covenant had assumed the status of a religion. They had little to offer the larger world and distrusted outsiders as harbingers of modernity.
“Visitors, however, will be received with courtesy provided local sensitivities are observed.”
“Whoa!” said Carson, studying the addendum on the planet’s economy “they appear to have an industrial base similar to Old Earth in the middle of the twentieth century.”
“Wasn’t it incredibly polluting?”
“You bet – the main power source comes from burning carbonaceous minerals – but there are only five million inhabitants so I guess the ecosystem can take the stress.”
“Well it is beautiful.” Aiyana was inspecting the packet’s images which showed snow-capped mountains and wide valleys covered with deep green foliage.
“The plant life has to absorb every scrap of energy it can from that red sunlight. Any terrestrial vegetation would need re-engineering.”
But Carson was more interested in the technology. “From an antique collector’s point of view I bet there’s some damn interesting stuff down there. I wonder what I can trade.”
“But what about finding the supply dump?”
“Yeah, this is not going to be easy. If we start flying around in the buggy the locals will go berserk.”
“Surely my fleet will pass unnoticed.”
“Maybe Tallis, but you’ll have to teach us how to operate it. I’m sorry but you’ll be staying home – you’d scare the life out of them. And we’d better make some new clothes. This is not, I repeat not, somewhere you’ll be running around naked Aiyana.”
“What excuse are we going to make for our visit?” Aiyana asked as the buggy hurtled sunward.
“Have you forgotten darling, I’m a mailman.”
“There’s mail for this place!”
“Yup, not much – most of it’s probably all for the consulate – but it gives us a legitimate reason to be here. Plus I’ll spin a story about hunting for antiques, that’ll be a good excuse for traveling around.”
“Where are we landing?” Aiyana asked as she wriggled in her new clothes.
A small copy of the silvery globe materialized in the buggy’s cabin. One straggling strip of land in the center of the northern hemisphere shone red.
“The welcome package indicates that this is the most developed landmass” said the buggy “All visiting craft are instructed to land at the airport at its southern tip.”
“I’ve been thinking about geography” said Aiyana. “I reckon Sakyamuni chose that promontory on Mirama because it was such an obvious landmark. It was a precaution against the radio beacon failing.”
“So you’re saying search for something similar here?”
“I guess, but where…” Her voice trailed off as she turned to the glowing image.
Two hours later they were hovering over the airport.
“It seems kind of empty” said Aiyana. “It’s really nothing but a big field.”
As instructed, they set down at the southern perimeter.
“I don’t know what the locals would make of you” Carson told the buggy once they had unloaded their baggage. “Best to stay out of sight – hang around in low orbit until I call”
“okay” said the little spacecraft “stay out of trouble.” It shot up into the violet sky.
They were in the middle of a flat expanse of grass so dark green it appeared almost black. On three sides the windswept land finally gave way to the ocean while to the north they could see a stubby tower surrounded by low buildings.
“This is about as exciting as Mirama” said Carson.
“Wait until Mr. Lizard turns up.”
“Here he comes now”
A uniformed man had emerged from the nearest building and was hurrying towards them.
“Honor to the Covenant and good morning to you!” the stranger cried as he came within hailing distance. He sported a neat mustache and had the overworked, slightly perplexed manner that seemed to be the universal attribute of all civil servants.
“Honor to the Covenant” Carson replied stepping forward. “My name is Carson, and this is my wife Aiyana.”
“Delighted to meet you Mr. Carson, Mrs. Carson”
“We just landed” Carson explained, ignoring the spluttering noises emanating from behind him.
“Er, yes” the official said. He glanced around. “I’m afraid I don’t see your aircraft.” His Universal was supplemented with Old English.
“I returned it to orbit.”
The man took an involuntary step back.
