Текст книги "Forty Thousand in Gehenna"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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He had no idea, much as he had studied them, what thoughts passed in their heads at such times–or if there were any thoughts at all.

And he went topside again, into the silence that surrounded him in this long waiting, because Ada Beaumont and Pete Gallin handled the details. He studied the printouts, and dispatched occasional messages to the appropriate heads of departments. There were his pictures, set on his desk; and there were memoirs he was writing–it seemed the time for such things. But the memoirs began with the voyage…and left out things that the government would not want remembered. Like most of his life. Classified. Erasable by government order. He put it on tape, and much of it was lies, why they came and what they hoped.

Mostly he waited, like the azi.

vii

T20 days MAT

Gutierrez, from a series of free lectures in lounge 2.

“…there’s as varied an ecology where we’re going as on Cyteen…somewhat more so, in respect to the vertical range of development; somewhat less, since you don’t have the range of phyla–of types of life. Plants…that’s algae, grasses, native fruits, pretty much like Cyteen, all the way up to some pretty spectacular trees–” (pause for slide series) “I’ll repeat those in closer detail later, or run them as often as you like. This is all stuff that came from the survey team. But the thing you’ll have heard about already, that’s the calibans, the moundbuilders. They’re pretty spectacular: the world’s distinct and crowning achievement, as it were. The first thing I want to make clear is that we’re not talking about an intelligence. The bias was in the other direction when the Mercury survey team landed. They looked at the ridges from orbit and thought they were something like cities. They went down there real carefully, I can tell you, after all the orbiting observations.” (slide) “Now let me get you scale on this.” (slide) “You can see the earthen ridge is about four times the man’s height. You always find these things on riverbanks and seacoasts, on the two of the seven continents that lie in the temperate zone–and this one’s going to neighbor our own site. The moundbuilders happen to pick all the really good sites. In fact you could just about pick out the sites that are prime for human development by looking for mounds.” (slide) “And this is one of the builders. Caliban is a character in a play: he was big and ugly. That’s what the probe crew called him. Dinosaur’s what you think, isn’t it? Big, gray dinosaur. He’s about four to five meters long, counting tail–warm‑blooded, slithers on his belly. Lizard type. But trying to pin old names on new worlds is a pretty hard game. The geologists always have a better time of it than the biologists. They deny it, but it’s true. Look at that skull shape there, that big bulge over the eyes. Now that brain is pretty large, about three times the size of yours and mine. And its convolutions aren’t at all like yours and mine. It’s got a place in the occipital region, the back, that’s like a hard gray handball, and pitted like an old ship’s hull; and then three lobes come off that, two on a side and one on top, shaped like human lungs, and having a common stem and interconnecting stems at several other places along their length. They’re frilled, those lobes–make you think of pink feathers; and then there’s three of those handball‑things in the other end of the skull, right up in that place we call the frontal lobes of a human brain, but not quite as big as the organ behind. Now that’s the brain of this citizen of the new world. And if it didn’t connect onto a spinal cord and have branches, and if microscopy didn’t show structure that could answer to neurons, we’d have wondered. It’s a very big brain. We haven’t mapped it enough to know what the correspondences are. But all it does with that big brain is build ridges. Yes, they dissected one…after they established the behavior as instinct‑patterned. You do that to a certain extent by frustrating an animal from a goal; and you watch how it goes about the problem. And if the answer is wired into the brain, if it’s instinct and not rationality, it’s going to tend to repeat its behavior over and over again. And that’s what a caliban does. They’re not aggressive. Actually, there’s a smaller, prettier version–” (slide) “The little green fellow with all the collar frills is called an ariel. A‑r‑i‑e‑l. That’s Caliban’s elvish friend. Now he’s about a meter long at maximum, nose to tail, and he runs in and out of caliban burrows completely unmolested. They’re fisheaters, both the calibans and ariels, stomachs full of fish. And they’ll nibble fruits. Or investigate about anything you put out for them. None of the lizards are poisonous. None of them ever offered to bite any of the probe team. You do have to watch out for caliban tails, because that’s two meters length of pretty solid muscle, and they’re not too bright, and they just could break your leg for you if they panicked. The ariels can give you a pretty hard swipe too. You pick them up by the base of the tail and the back of the neck, if so happens you have to pick one up, and you hold on tight, because the report is they’re strong. Why would you want to pick one up? Well, not often, I’d think. But they apparently run in and out of caliban burrows, very pretty folk, as you see, and no one’s ever caught an ariel doing a burrow of its own: all play and no work, the ariels. And the probe team found them in their camp, and walking through their tents, and getting into food if they had a chance. They haven’t got any fear at all. They and the calibans sit on top of the food chain, and they haven’t got any competition. The calibans don’t seem to get anything at all out of the association; it’s not certain whether the ariels get anything out of it but shelter. Both species swim and fish. Neither species commits aggression against the other. The ariels are very quick to get out of the way when the calibans put a foot down, while in the human camp, the ariels sometimes went into a kind of freeze where you were in danger of stepping on one, and they’d be stiff as a dried fish until a second after you’d pick them up, after which they’d come to life in a hurry. There’s some speculation that it’s a panic reaction, that the overload of noise and movement in the camp is just too much for it; or that it thinks it’s hidden when it does that. Or maybe it’s picking up something humans don’t hear, some noise from the machinery or the com. Its brain is pretty much like the Caliban’s, by the way, but the handball organs are pink and quite soft.

“Interiorly, the snout is odd too, in both species. That gentle swelling behind the nostril slits is a chamber filled with cilia. Hairlike projections, but flesh. And they’re rife with bloodvessels. So are the organs that seem to correspond to lungs. Filled with cilia. Like a nest of worms. They expel water when they come up from a dive: they sit on the shore and heave and it comes out the nostril slits. So they’re taking in water; and they’re getting oxygen out of it. Gills and lungs at once. They can handle river water and estuary water, but no one’s observed them diving at sea. They may have relatives that do. We’re a long way from knowing how many different varieties of lizards there are. But the present count is about fifty‑two species under the size of the ariels. And a lot are aquatic.

“There are flying lizards–for the naturalists among you that know what bats are–rather like bats and rather not; warmblooded, we reckon–the probe crew never caught any, but the photo stills” (Slide) “–rather well suggest bats; that’s a terrene form. Or Downbelow gliders, of which no one’s yet got a specimen. We don’t know a thing about them, but their agility in the air, along with the fact that calibans and ariels are warmblooded–suggest that they’re the world’s closest approach to a mammal. This is the item we’ve got a particular caution on. They’re fairly rare in the area, but they do swarm. The wingspan is half a meter, some larger. They could bite; could carry disease: could be venomous–we don’t know. Because they might be something like a mammal, we’re a little more concerned about contamination with them. There’s no good being scared of them. I’m talking about remote possibility precautions. Everything’s new here. You don’t find easy correspondences in lifeforms. All the can’ts and won’ts you ever heard can be revised on a new world. Nature’s really clever about engineering around can’ts. Insects can’t get above a certain size…except that insect is a terrene category term, covering things with chitin and certain kinds of internal structure; but what we meet in the Beyond can differ quite a bit. And our world has some oddities.” (slide) “Like the hoby mole. That’s a meter long, half a meter wide, engorges earth like a burrowing worm. That tiny annular segmentation is chitin, and they’re very soft. Yes, they are something like an insect, and if you put a spade through one by accident, don’t touch the remains. They exude an irritant that sent a member of the probe team to sickbay for two days. So there’s also a caution out on this one.

“There are snakes. They’re coldblooded and they’re constrictors. At least the samples were. We don’t rule out poison. Possibly we’re being alarmist in that regard: human prejudice. But poison in a legless structure seems to be a very efficient hunting mechanism and it’s proven so on two worlds besides Earth.

“And the fairy flitters.” (slide) “These little glider lizards are about fingersized, the wings are really rib extension, and if you set a lantern near the trees, you’ll get a halo of flitters. They don’t really fly, mind, they glide. The iridescence lasts as long as they live. You only see it in the photos, not in the lab specimens. They eat putative insects, they’re utterly harmless, and probably beneficial to the farming effort. They’ll cling to anything when they land, and you just disengage them gently and set them back on a branch. They’ll fly right back to the light. As long as there’s no trees near our camp lights, we won’t have trouble with flitters piling up there. But they’ll be all over you if you carry a light through the woods, and I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with vehicle headlights. It’s a shame to think of killing any of them. They’re far too beautiful. We’re going to try to devise something that might drive them off. Ideas are welcome.

“Fish–beyond counting. Saltwater and freshwater. No poisons yet detected. Edible. We’ll want to be sure to stick to varieties that have already been tested; and bio will run tests on new species as they’re brought in. You’ll learn to recognize the species so you know what to eat and what to bring us.”

“Microorganisms. We’re very fortunate in that regard. No one picked up a parasite. No one got sick. No one developed allergies, either. We don’t get careless, though. And particularly where you have mammal analogues, we don’t get careless. There’s a phenomenon we call biological resonance, for want of a better name. That’s when two worlds’ microorganisms set up housekeeping together and develop new traits over a period of years; when they cooperate. So–the medical staff is going to have a long lecture on this topic–you have to report every contact with a new lifeform, especially if you accidentally touch something, which is not a good idea. And you report every runny nose and every cough and every itch‑ We do have a biological isolation chamber we can set up. If someone turns out to be in really serious trouble and nothing else will work, we can put you in a bubble for three years until a ship comes back and lifts you off. Short of that we have antihistamines and all kinds of other alternatives, up to the autoimmune lot, so there’s no good becoming obsessive about the chance of contamination; but there’s no good being cavalier about things, either. If you drop down in a faint, it’s really helpful if you’ve already told us you got stung by something that morning or that you’d been digging down on the beach. You’re all going to have to keep your wits about you and be able to give a meticulous account of your whereabouts and your contacts with any and everything. The thing you forget to mention could be the key that we need to figure out what’s wrong with you. And that’s partly my business, because I have to form a picture of every ecosystem, so that if your contact with something harmful was on the beach, for instance, I have a good idea what to look for. And the faster I can answer questions, the safer you are. That’s why I have to ask everyone in the mission to be bio’s eyes and ears. Leave the hands and the touching to us, where you have any doubts. Humans can be compatible with all kinds of ecosystems; don’t kill anything, just move it over. This world doesn’t have any predators to argue with us; and we’ve got the construction sites planned so that eventually we’re going to intersperse urban development with wild areas and wildlife safeguards. The optimum development areas are also the optimum sites for some of the world’s most interesting inhabitants, and there’s no reason why protected habitat can’t exist side by side, theirs and ours. It has to do with attitude toward the wild. It has to do with knowledge and not fear. We’re not turning this world into Cyteen. We’re turning it into something uniquely its own. People who come here will be able to see the old world right along with the most modern development. Caliban habitat right in the middle of a city. Humans are very flexible. We can just extend a road a bit and locate a loading dock around a critical area; and that’s what we’ll do. That’s why there’s a land bank being set up. When you own land, you’ll have title to a certain value of land, but not any specific land, and that lets the governor’s office and the bio department create a preserve where needed, and it protects you and your descendants against any financial damage. You can’t own caliban habitat. That has to be left. On the other hand, to prevent their encroachment on us, there will be barrier zones, usually residential, surrounding any contact point–like, for instance, the caliban mounds near the landing site. In the theory that lifeforms get along better with each other than lifeforms get along with roads and factories, there’ll be housing built along the line that turns only windows in that direction, not doors, not accesses. Once we determine the actual boundary of an area, that’s where the permanent building will go. And you’ll be up against a protected zone, so your actual maintenance on that side will be handled through the bio department. City core will be industrial. All city growth will be handled through the creation of similar enclaves along roadways. This is the way it is in the charter. I think you understand it. I just want to explain how the bio section relates to the construction agency and to the governor’s office and why we’ll have some functions linked in with security and law enforcement. We have a constituency, which is the ecosystem we’re entering. We also represent the human ecosystem. We work out accommodations and bring those before other departments, who have to adjust to the facts as we present them. We don’t really have authority. Nature has that. We just find out the facts as they exist; the decision’s already made–that the two systems have to exist in balance. A world where humans come in at the top of the food chain is easily thrown out of balance. Those of you who are stationborn will appreciate that quite readily. It’s like a station, like Pell, for instance, where two biosystems exist in complement. Very tricky lifesupport setup, one looping into the other, and each benefitting the other. But when you start from the beginning you can do that, and make them balance. We look to have station manufacture for the really heavy and polluting industries. All the departments will be doing these seminars and we’ll go on doing them after we land, making tapes for the azi and for future generations. All of this is going to be priceless stuff. And mostly history’s going to make liars out of us, but, we sincerely hope, not in our hopes for the place.

“I’ll be going over the ecosystem from the microorganisms up in the more detailed session tomorrow; and I’ll be doing it again for my own staff in a morning session day after tomorrow. Check your schedules, and if you find you want to sit in on that lecture you’re quite welcome. It’s going to be pretty detailed, but after the other session it might make fair sense. Session to begin tomorrow morning is Zell Parham on security and law, this room, 0700 mainday…

“Game in R12.”

viii

T20 days MAT

“…The world is to be loved,” the taped voice whispered, and Jin accepted it deeply, wholly. “The things you will find there are beautiful. All the things that really belong to the world are to be protected; but you will build there. Born‑men will tell you where you will build and if life is taken in the building, that is as it must be. If you can spare a living thing you will do so, if it is your choice alone. You will observe certain cautions in touching wild things. You will report all such contacts to your supervisors, just as born‑men have to report them.

“You will work in the fields; and it may be you will take lives. That will be an accident and there is no guilt.

“You will catch fish and eat them, and this is the order of nature. There is no guilt in this. Fish are there for your use, and they feel very little pain.

“You will become part of this world, and if ever people came to harm it you would take up weapons to defend it. In that, you might kill, and you would not have guilt. But if ever you had to take up weapons, you would be trained, and the governor would tell you.

“You will work because you are strong and because your work is very important. You will have a right to be very proud of what you do, and when it is all done well, you will be closer to being born‑men.

“The government which holds your contract is very pleased with you. You’re learning very well. Soon you will get born‑man tapes teaching you the nature of the world, and in very little time you will step out on your land. Through all the difficulties you will experience you can find occasion for pride that you will overcome them all. Every difficulty will make you stronger and wiser, and you will fit more and more perfectly into the world. Be happy. Not everything will be pleasant, but every difficulty will give the pleasure of its solution, and the confidence that you are as intelligent and as fine as the promise of your gene‑set. The government believes in you. The born‑men will take care of you and you will take care of them, because where they are wiser than you, you are very strong and you have the capacity to become wise. Love the land. Love the world. Care for the born‑men, and expect their care for you. You have every right to be proud and happy…”

Jin lay relaxed, dissolved in the pleasure of approval–stirred, as much as anything moved him in this time, with the anticipation of his becoming. There had never been such azi as themselves, he was persuaded, and he had only believed he was ordinary because no one had ever pointed out to him his uniqueness. He saw his descendants in vast numbers, his genetic material, and Pia’s, who was quite as wonderful, ultimately mixed with all the other specially chosen material. They were made of born‑manmaterial: he had never realized this until the tape told him. The capacity was in them, and it was awakening.

He thought on this, having a capacity for sustained concentration that could knit together the most complex of problems. This capacity could be turned to pure reason. He had never had it called upon in quite this way. In fact, it was discouraged, because an azi’s understanding was full of gaps which could mislead. But this special capacity which born‑men lost in the distractions of their sense‑overloaded environments–could make him very wise as the total sum of his knowledge increased. Of this too, he was proud, knowing that a 9998 was extraordinarily capable in this regard. It would make him loved, and secure, and born‑men would never give him bad tape.

“Highest life native to the world are the Calibans,” the tape told him. “And if you understand them, they will do you no harm…”

ix

T42 days MAT

Venture log

“…arrival Gehenna system 1018 hours 34 minutes mission apparent time. US Swiftand US Capableto follow at one hour intervals…”

“…estimate Cyteen elapsed time: 280 days; dates will be revised on recovery of reliable reference.”

“…confirm arrival US Swifton schedule.”

“…confirm arrival US Capableon schedule.”

“…insert into orbit Gehenna II scheduled 1028 hours 15 minutes mission apparent time. All systems normal. All conditions within parameters predicted by Mercury probe. System arrival now determined to be possible within narrower margin to be calculated for future use. Systemic positions were accurately predicted by Mercury probe data. Venturewill make further observations during exit from Gehenna system…”

x

T42 days MAT

US Venture

Office of Col. James A. Conn

It was there, real and solid. The world. Gehenna II, the designation was; Newport, he reckoned to record the name. Their world. Conn sat at his desk in front of the viewer with his hands steepled in front of him and looked at the transmitted image, trying to milk more detail from it than the vid was giving them yet. The second of six planets, a great deal blue and a great deal white, and otherwise brown with vast deserts, sparsely patched with green. Not quite as green as Cyteen. But similar. The image hazed in his eyes as he thought not of where he was going, but of places he had been…and of Jean, buried back home; and what she would say, when they had been like Beaumont and Davies, travelling together. Even the war had not stopped that. She had been there. With him. There existed that faint far thought in his mind that he had committed some kind of desertion, not a great one, but at least a small one, that he had hoped for happiness coming here, for something more to do. He left her there, and there was no one to tend her grave and no one who would care. That had seemed such a small thing–go on, she would say, with that characteristic wave of her hand when he hung his thoughts on trivialities. Go on, with that crisp decisiveness in her voice that had sometimes annoyed him and sometimes been so dear: Lord, Jamie, what’s a point in all of that?

Something had gone out of him since Jean was gone: the edge that had been important when he was younger, perhaps; or the quickness that crackle in Jean’s voice had set into him; or the confidence–that she was there, to back him and to second guess him.

Go on, he could hear her saying, when he pulled out of Cyteen; when he took the assignment; and now–go on, when it came down to permanency here.

Go on–when it came to the most important assignment of his life, and no Jean to tell it to. It all meant very little against that measure. For the smallest evening with her face looking back at him–he would trade anything to have that back. But there were no takers. And more–he knew what lived down there, that it was not Cyteen, however homelike it looked from orbit.

The light over the door flashed, someone seeking entry. He reached across to the console and pushed the button–“Ada,” he said curiously as she came in.

“Ah, you’ve got it,” she murmured, indicating the screen. “I wanted to make sure you were awake.”

“No chance I’d miss it. I’d guess the lounge has it too.”

“You couldn’t fit another body in there. I’m going down to 30; the officers are at the screen down there.”

“I’ll come down when the vid gets more detail.”

“Right.”

She went her way. Bob Davies would be down there. Jealousy touched him, slight and shameful. There would be Gallin and Sedgewick and Dean and Chiles; and the rest of the mission…

One horizon, one site for years ahead. Blueskyed. Grounded forever. That was what it came to. And whatever private misgivings anyone had now, it was too late.

Look at that, he could imagine Jean saying. And: Don’t take stupid chances, Jamie.

Don’t you, he would say.

He looked back at the image, at the bluegreen world that was not home at all. The whole thing was a stupid chance. An ambition which Jean had never shared.

“Col. Conn,” the com said, Mary Engles’ voice. “Are you there, colonel?”

He acknowledged, a flick of the key. “Captain.”

“We’ve got a fix on the landing site coming up.”

A shiver went over his skin. “What do you reckon in schedules?”

“We’re going to ride here one more day and do mapping and data confirmation before we let you out down there. You’ll want that time to order your sequence of drop. I’ll be feeding you the shuttle passenger slots, and you fill them up at your own discretion. The equipment drop is all standard procedure with us, and we’ve got all that down as routine. You handle your own people according to your own preferences. You will need some of the construction personnel in your initial drop. I’d like to ask you to stay on board until the final load. In case of questions.”

“Good enough. I’ll wait your printout.”

“We have suggestions, based on experience. I’ll pass them to you, by your leave.”

“No umbrage, captain. Experience is appreciated.”

“A professional attitude, colonel, and appreciated in turn. Printout follows.”

He opened the desk cabinet, took out a bottle and a glass and poured himself a drink, soothed his nerves while the printout started spilling onto his desk.

Everything would have to be packed. Mostly there were the microfax books and the study tapes, that were precious. Uniforms–there were no more uniforms where they were going. They became citizens down there. Colonists. No more amenities either, in spite of the cases of soap. He meant to have a shower morning and evening during the unloading. It was that kind of thing one missed most under the conditions he was going to face. Soap. Hot water. Pure water. And a glass of whiskey in the evenings.

The printout grew. On the screen, the tighter focus came in. It agreed with the photos in the mission documents.

Patterns showed up under tight focus…the same patterns which the probe had abundantly reported, curious mounds near seacoasts and rivers, vast maze designs which interrupted the sparse green with tracings of brown lines, loops and rays stretching over kilometers of river‑bank and coastline.

That was where they were going.

xi

T43 days MAT

Communication: mission command

“…First drop scheduled 1042 hours 25 minutes mission apparent time. Capt. Ada Beaumont commanding. Selected for first drop: M/Sgt. Ilya V. Burdette with five seats; M/Sgt. Pavlos D. M. Bilas, with five seats; M/Sgt. Dinah L. Sigury, two seats; Cpl. Nina N. Ferry, one seat; Sgt. Jan Vandermeer, one seat; Capt. Bethan M. Dean, one seat; Dr. Frelan D. Wilson, one seat; Dr. Marco X. Gutierrez, one seat; Dr. Park Young, one seat; Dr. Hayden L. Savin, one seat; workers A 187‑6788 through A 208‑0985, thirty seats.”

xii

T43 days MAT

Venture loading bay one

“He’s not coming,” Ada Beaumont said quietly, rested her hand on her husband’s back, kept her eyes front, on the movement of machinery, the loading of cannisters onto the lift, an intermittent clank and crash.

Bob Davies said nothing. Nothing was really called for, and Bob was careful with protocols. Ada stayed still a moment–looked aside where some of the ship’s crew were rigging the ropes to channel boarding personnel to the lift–but the bay up on the frame was empty yet, the shuttle on its way up from Venture’s belly, close to match‑up with the personnel dock. The lift yonder would take them by groups of ten, synch them out of Venture’s comfortable rotation, to let them board the null G shuttle. The azi were to go first, taking the upright berths in the hold and to the rear of the cabin, and then the citizen complements would follow, in very short sequence.

But Conn stayed in his quarters. He had rarely come out of them since their arrival in the system. The ship was crowded; departments were busy with their plans: possibly no one noticed. He played cards and drank with the two of them–he had done that, at the end of watches, regularly. But he never came out among the staff.

“I think,” Ada Beaumont said more quietly still, when the crew was furthest from them and only Bob could possibly hear. “I think Jim shouldn’t have taken this one. I wish he’d take the out he still has and go back to Cyteen. Claim health reasons.”

And then, in further silence, Bob venturing no comment: “What he actually said was–‘You handle things. You’ll be doing that, mostly. The old man just wants to ride it out easy.’”

“He wasn’t that way,” Bob said finally.

“It’s leaving Cyteen. It’s Jean, I think. He never showed how bad that hurt.”

Bob Davies ducked his head. There was noise in the corridor to the left. Some of the azi were coming up. The clock ran closer and closer to their inevitable departure. He reached and took his wife’s hand–himself in the khaki that was the uniform of the day for everyone headed planetward, civ or military. “So maybe that’s why he can sit up here; because he can lean on you. Because he knows you’ll do it. You can handle it. And there’s Pete Gallin. He’s all right.”

“It’s no way to start out.”

“Hang, he can’t make every launch down here.”

“ I’dbe here,” Beaumont said. She shook her head. The azi line entered the bay, brighteyed, in soiled white coveralls; weeks with no bathing, some of them with gall sores from the bunks. There were already difficulties. Some of the details regarding the azi were not at all pretty, not the comfortable view of things the science people or even the troops had had of the voyage. At least Conn had been down seeing to the azi, she gave him that. He had been down in the holds during the voyage, maybe too often.

Now Conn handed it to her. She knew the silent language. Had served with Conn before. Knew his limits.