PROBABILITY MOON

by Nancy Kress

  Insufficient data.

  Bazargan turned to Gruber, Allen, and Ann, strapped in beside him in the shuttle, crowded by masses of genetically engineered red roses, yellow dahlias, and orange snowballs. “When we make planetfall,” he said quietly, “you can leave your swords in the shuttle.”

  Syree Johnson followed the shuttle trajectory on the bridge displays. Automatically her mind reviewed the planetary data. Point six nine AUs from its primary, a G8 emitting .48 of Sol’s energy per unit area. Maximum energy reaching the planet at intensity .66 micrometers, roughly the same as Earth. Point seven three Terran mass, 5,740 clicks in radius .9 Terran gravity on the planetary surface. Rotation of 26.2 Terran hours, period of 213 rotations, inclination to the ecliptic of 3.2 degrees. One major almost-circumequatorial landmass plus coastal islands, some of them large. Unremarkable composition, except for some strong radioactivity in the second-highest mountain range, identified by the flow of neutrinos registering on the Zeus’s detectors.

  None of it mattered.

  Despite what the anthropologists thought, the only thing that mattered about “World” was something currently known only to Syree, her military physics team, and Commander Peres. Something so potentially momentous that it had equipped and funded this expedition to a backward planet in a remote section of space served by a little-traveled space tunnel. Something that could tip the balance in the far-off war with the Fallers, those peculiar and aggressive and dangerous aliens.

  The planet that its natives ethnocentrically called “World” had seven moons. Only one of them wasn’t.

  And now that the anthropologists had left the Zeus, Syree Johnson and her team could get to work finding out what the seventh moon actually was. They had a hypothesis. Her job was to prove it right.

  THREE

  GOFKIT JEMLOE

  All of Gofkit Jemloe turned out to welcome the Terrans. Hadjil Pek Voratur, Enli realized, was a very important man. He walked toward the Terrans a few steps ahead of the village priest, a short man with unfortunate ears, whose name Enli had forgotten.

  Pek Voratur was portly and tall, with well-fed skin that looked oiled and neckfur that undoubtedly was. With his handsome tunic he wore a magnificent woven vest that must have been imported from Seuril Island, a belt studded with gold, and a flat wide hat decked with perfect saji blossoms. Beside him walked his wife, Alu Pek Voratur, dressed with similar richness. Both carried armfuls of perfect flowers in the hospitality colors, yellow and orange, plus a nosegay of sacred blue frimpil flowers to bless the visitors. The priest should have been carrying those. That Pek Voratur did, instead, told Enli quite a lot about the man.

  But it wasn’t Pek Voratur she was interested in. These were the first aliens she’d ever seen.

  At first sight, they were disappointing. Too much like real people (or, rather, like people already proven to be real, Enli reminded herself; the distinction was why she was here). Big, but not as monstrously huge as rumor said. Two arms, two legs, torso, head, two eyes, one mouth … Enil had secretly been hoping for monsters. Or at least something exotic.

  Pek Bazargan has told the servants of the First Flower that Worlders and Terrans grew from the same seeds, long ago, Pek Voratur had said to his assembled household, but it had been clear to Enli that he didn’t believe it. How could he? What an idea! If that was the kind of things these Terrans believed, the priests of Reality and Atonement would most certainly decide they were unreal. Still, Pek Voratur might have misquoted. The Terrans deserved a chance. Souls were at stake.

  Enli craned her neck over the crowd; as a lowly cleaner, she stood near the back. But she was tall.

  When they approached closer, walking from their flying boat toward Gofkit Jemloe, the Terrans appeared more satisfyingly alien. Their skins were various shades of brown, from dun to dirt, rather than the normal pale yellow. Their foreheads were strangely flat. Most shocking, they had no neckfur, but did have fur on top of their heads, covering their skull ridges. The headfur was evidently long enough to pull into curving bundles. Rather pretty, if you didn’t mind not seeing people’s expressions.

  The Terrans knew enough to bring yellow and orange flowers with them, masses of blooms of types Enli had never seen before. Why, if they gave Pek Voratur seeds for those plants, that alone could make him the richest man on World!

  One of the Terrans pushed a cart, an ugly vehicle of straight, utilitarian lines. The cart was covered with a blanket and more flowers. Enli couldn’t see what was inside. The Terrans and Worlders met, and Enli strained to hear.

  “I honor your flowers,” Pek Voratur said. Speaking before the mayor or the priest did! But neither winced with the sharp onset of headpain that Enli knew so well; shared reality had not been violated. All must have been agreed on and rehearsed.

  The oldest Terran, probably male, replied correctly: “I rejoice in your blossoms.” His accent was strange, but no stranger-than Coe Lijil islanders.

  “You are welcome to the flowers of our household,” said Alu Pek Voratur.

  “Your beautiful blossoms rejoice my spirit,” another Terran said. Female, Enli decided.

  “May your garden bloom always,” the mayor said.

  “The petals of your flowers are beautiful,” said a third Terran, amazingly huge, in a terrible accent. Didn’t they know any other flower words beside “beautiful”? Were they then stupid?

  “Your flowers transport my heart,” the priest said.

  “May your blossoms always please the souls of your ancestors,” said the last Terran, who was pushing the cart. His accent was quite good.

  “I am Hadjil Pek Voratur. You are welcome to the flowers of my household.”

  “I am Ahmed Pek Bazargan. You are welcome to the flowers of my heart.”

  The ceremony went on, followed by the ritual exchanges of flowers. Enli noted’ everything, for her report. The Terrans certainly acted real.

  Finally Pek Voratur removed a blanket from a World cart—much more attractively curved than the Terran cart—and said formally, “Here are the children of my household.”

  He meant, of course, the ones too small to be pronounced real, all those still isolated in the crelm house. There were seven: four walking and three still in infancy. They peered shyly from their seats in the cart. One little girl looked frightened and puckered her face to cry; the older children were not used to being away from their crelm house. Only the babies looked unaffected, two staring with wide dark eyes and one asleep, scrunched in its basket.

  Pek Bazargan said, “Here are the children of my household,” and the Terran pushing the cart pulled back its blanket.

  Two babies, much plumper and bigger than the World babies. They lacked neckfur, but because they also lacked very much fur on their heads, they looked to Enli far more normal than the Terran adults. Their eyes were pale but filled with shining light, like reflections on clear water. Each stared around with exactly the same round-eyed, unblinking stare as World babies, and this further endeared them. People in the crowd hummed softly, “hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” smiling despite themselves at the pretty infants.

  If Enli had been making bets in a pel house, at that moment she would have bet on the Terrans’ being declared real.

  “Let us go home,” Pek Voratur said, and everyone shifted positions by rank to follow the aliens to the Voratur household. Enli took her place farthest from the dignitaries, at the far right end of the fan-shaped crowd escorting the Terrans. As it happened, she was well placed to see everything that happened next.

  “Look! See! See!” the child cried, running toward them.

  She was easily over eight years old, and big for her age, her shift torn. Dirt smeared her clothing and face; blood clotted on one bare arm. She drooled constantly. Enli looked away. The child’s eyes were both wild and empty, without a soul. She was clearly unreal, and her family had not yet held the necessary ceremony. How could they have waited? It was cruel, it should not be allowed.

  No one looked at the girl. The
crowd continued as before, walking slowly toward the household of Hadjil Pek Voratur, chatting or humming. But a sorrow rippled over them, like wind in grass. Enli could feel it in her every pore. The dark eyes around her deepened and mourned, together, in shared reality.

  The girl stopped, saw the Terran babies, and made a small gargled, “Oooooo.” She had no more language than that, evidently. She moved toward the Terran visitors.

  Silently, never breaking stride, never looking at her unreal and empty husk, Worlders prevented her. The crowd of them shifted and flowed, so there were always one or two adults between the girl and the cart with the Terran infants. The girl pushed and butted with her head, but she could not break through. Finally she stood still and broke into loud wailing. Worlders did not hear her. The crowd moved on.

  And then it happened. The Terran pushing the infant cart, David Pek Allen, stopped and smiled at the unreal husk.

  “Let her see the children,” he said. “I’ll hold her so she doesn’t hurt them.”

  Everyone froze.

  Pek Allen reached between two men and took the unreal child by the arm, drawing her firmly forward but restraining her from coming too close. “See, little girl? These are Terran children.”

  Enli could feel her head begin to pain, even through the government pills. What then of the others without pills? Faces began to pucker. An old woman closed her eyes and pressed her withered hands between her eyes. Couldn’t Pek Allen feel how he was violating shared reality? Couldn’t he feel it inside his own head, the discomfort between the eyes that quickly became pain at being out of belief with the village, with reality?

  Pek Allen went on smiling, talking to the unreal thing beside him.

  That could mean only one thing: Pek Allen did not share reality. He himself was unreal.

  Enli’s mind whirled. Was this the answer, then—so quickly? No, no … The other Terrans hadn’t addressed the unreal child. In fact, Pek Bazargan now moved toward Pek Allen, putting a hand on his arm. He said something, too low for the crowd to hear. Pek Allen’s face below the absurd headfur turned red, and he dropped the girl’s arm.

  Someone shifted between the girl and the Terrans. Then someone else. A man came forward, shoulders bent in the attitude of extreme atonement. Somehow the unreal girl disappeared.

  Again the crowd moved forward, shared reality restored. Once more everyone acted from inside of belief. On the faces of those nearest her, Enli saw the headpain ease. Skull ridges smoothed, smiles tremulously returned. A man clutching his stomach—it took some people that way, in the gut—eased his arms away from his body. Still, the crowd was not the same as before. Enli could feel it, the uncertainty, the strain. No one walked quite as close to the Terrans as they had before.

  And so the hospitality procession came to the gates of the Voratur household, and the aliens went inside.

  It was surprisingly difficult being an informer in this place.

  On her other jobs, Enli had informed on only one person. Here there were four Terrans, not counting the babies, and they were not often together. How could she be in four places at once? It was impossible. Reality and Atonement asked too much. Plus, the Terrans themselves made informing harder.

  The huge Terran, Dieter Pek Gruber, wasn’t even in the household at all. He had been given a room, in which he placed many objects of obscure purposes. Then he rode off on the most beautiful bicycle Enli had ever seen, to travel to the Neury Mountains to “look for rocks.” What sense did that make? There were plenty of rocks right here in Gofkit Jemloe; the farmers picked them out of the fields and piled them into crude walls. Rocks choked the river, tripped the bicycler, dotted the marshes. Why did the Terran need to travel all the way to the Neury Mountains to gather rocks? The sacred Neury Mountains, the place the First Flower inhabited since coming down from Obri, were also unhealthy, as everyone knew. People who went into them usually sickened and died. Their neckfur fell out, their bodies burned with sores, their throats thickened and tongues blackened. Thus did the First Flower guard her sacred beds. Pek Gruber had been told all this. Yet he went into the mountains anyway. For rocks.

  Then there was the youngest Terran, David Pek Allen, who had raised such grave doubts at the hospitality procession. He worked and ate and slept in the crelm house, with the two Terran infants and the seven Voratur children who had not yet been declared real. In the villages, infants were treated with a casual lovingness, cared for while the adults worked and played, but it was different in rich households. The crelm house was separated from the big house, with its own gardens and courtyards. Until a servant of the First Flower certified that the Voratur children did indeed become discomfited and upset when they were out of belief, the children were isolated from shared reality. Their parents visited them most days. Otherwise, the crelm house had its own staff of nursemaids, cook, and cleaners. Enli was not among the cleaners assigned to the crelm house. She had not so much as glimpsed Pek Allen during the last tenday.

  That left Ahmed Pek Bazargan and Ann Pek Sikowski. They at least lived in the sprawling big house, as honored guests. But Pek Bazargan accompanied either Pek Voratur or his wife nearly everywhere: to the docks when the Voratur trading fleet set out, to the market, to the gardens, to Rafkit Seloe, to visit friends. Pek Bazargan, in fact, was rarely home. And even when he was, she couldn’t learn very much. Cleaners, she discovered, did not clean rooms at the same time the household family occupied them.

  Pek Sikorski’s rooms she didn’t clean at all. The Terran female had been given apartments on an outer courtyard, close to the outer wall that circled the vast household. One chamber was Pek Sikorski’s personal room. The other two she filled with strange objects, plus plants and animals that she killed and dissected. Well, Pek Sikorski was a healer; that was how healers made their pills and potions. But the Terran healer requested of Pek Voratur that no one else enter her workrooms, not even to clean. Probably she didn’t want her healer’s potions stolen before she was ready to sell them to Worlders herself. No one could blame her for that. However, it meant that by the end of her first tenday, when Enli was supposed to report in to Pek Nagredil, she had nothing to report. At best she had only glimpsed the Terrans in passing through corridors and courtyards.

  Gloomily Enli rode her bicycle toward Rafkit Seloe. The trip seemed to take a long weary time. As she had expected, Pek Nagredil was not pleased.

  “You observed nothing of the Terrans? Nothing at all?”

  “I told you about the hospitality procession,” Enli said.

  “The sunflashers told us about the hospitality procession,” which of course they had. Enli had seen the woman in the tunic of Annals and Sunflashers, racing on her bicycle toward Rafkit Seloe. From there news of the Terrans had flashed by mirror glass from hill tower to hill tower around all of World. Before nightfall, the Voratur hospitality procession had been shared reality.

  Enli said feebly, “I told you about the personal rooms each Terran received in the Voratur household.”

  “But nothing beyond that? Not even that Pek Sikorski hired the kitchen boy to catch frebs and bring them to her to kill?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Pek Brimmidin,” Pek Nagredil said severely, “you are not the only informant we have in the Voratur household.”

  Enli felt stupid. Of course she was not the only informant; for a job of this importance, Reality and Atonement would use others as well. Who were they? She knew there was no point in asking.

  Pek Nagredil walked across his small office, absently touched a statue, squinted at a wall hanging. He had not combed his neckfur very well. His skull ridges wrinkled. Enli waited.

  Finally he said, “We will have to try something different. Here is what I want you to do, Pek Brimmidin.”

  He unlocked a heavy wooden chest in a corner of the room.

  Enli waited until midafternoon, when there was a lull in the cleaning routines and the family was often out of the house. Quietly she slipped through the maze of
interconnecting courtyards and treed parks to Pek Sikorski’s apartments near the east wall. The Terran worked at her bench. Enli looked, then looked away. A dead freb lay pinned to a board, its belly slit to show the insides, from which pieces had already been removed. Alien objects littered the room. Enli stamped her foot to make her presence known.

  “Oh!” Pek Sikorski said, turning swiftly. “Who are you?”

  “Enli Pek Brimmidin, household cleaner,” Enli said humbly. “Forgive me for startling you.”

  “Come in,” Pek Sikorski said. Her manners were good; she plucked a yellow pajal blossom from the hospitality bush by the door and offered it to Enli. “You are welcome to the flowers of my rooms.”

  “Your blossoms rejoice my soul,” Enli said, taking the flower, and felt a sharp stab of pain between her eyes, even through the piHs. Her words violated shared reality. She had no soul, not while she was unreal.

  Pek Sikorski waited. Clearly she expected Enli to also produce a flower. Well, that was why Enli was here. But for a moment she hesitated, struck by the weird strangeness of a Terran seen close up.

  Pek Sikorski had light-colored fur above her eyes, as well as on her head. And how much of the headfur there was! Instead of being tied on top of her head, as during the welcome procession, the long pale headfur streamed down her back. But most peculiar of all was Pek Sikorski’s naked neck. Didn’t it get cold? And didn’t it feel immodest, exposed like that? Usually only intimates saw a person’s neck: mothers nuzzling infants, lovers exploring each other’s bodies.

  Also, the Terran smelled odd. Not unpleasant, just odd, in a way Enli couldn’t describe.