I spent a good deal of the rest of our voyage talking to Dear or Hermes. Dear was an enigma. Intelligent machines were completely outwith my experience and I had no referents to compare it with. It sounded like a female and spoke, mostly, like a person and I kept thinking of it as ‘her’. Just when I’d convinced myself it really had a feminine personality, it would say something that was so ‘un-human’ that I was forced to go back to the mental drawing board with my assessment. However, as a fund of knowledge, it was invaluable and I picked its brains mercilessly for information about Galactic society and I might expect to find on Geretimal.
Chapter 3
If I’d had any fantasies of what a spaceport should look like, the one at Bartimarmiminniandriss, the capital city of Geretimal, would have dispelled them. It looked like bloody Heathrow Airport. I found out later it was an airport. Most of it was used by atmospheric craft, that is aeroplanes, but one part of it was for extraterrestrial use. Steegees of all shapes and sizes and colours were lined up in rows like in a car park. We dropped down onto the bed of a low, flat platform. It turned out to be portable as a tractor was attached and we were towed to the terminal. I had sort of expected we’d go to the main complex. Instead we were taken to a smaller group of buildings off to one side. Must be the VIP suite, I thought.
It wasn’t. It was immigration control. I wasn’t officially a citizen of the Galaxy and so could not be permitted to ‘land’ until I’d been processed. Hermes assured me that, as the Lottery Winner, I was being given special treatment. If I was I’d’ve hated to have been an ordinary immigrant. I was poked, prodded, scanned, checked, examined and tested in about a dozen different ways. In between, I filled in forms. Actually I didn’t fill in the forms, Hermes did. He had forgotten, or possibly he hadn’t as he seemed remarkably sanguine about it all, two important facts; I couldn’t speak the language and I couldn’t read the language. At every point he had to act as my interpreter. I was glad he was there. He knew exactly what the procedure was and patiently explained what was going on and he was able, to a large extent, to interpret the questions and frame them in terms I was familiar with.
It seemed interminable; the ‘hurry up and wait’ culture of bureaucracies always does but, at last, I was solemnly presented with my ID card, complete with my ugly mug in glorious 3-dimensional colour. The man… no I must remember that the polite term is ‘being’… presented it to me with a dramatic flourish. As soon as he let it go, his face broke out into a broad beam and he gibbered some words at me.
“He says he is honoured to have met you,” Hermes interpreted. “He hopes you will remember him and that you enjoy your visit to Geretimal.”
“Please thank him and tell him I’m grateful for the prompt and courteous way I’ve been treated”
Hermes beamed at me and did so.
If the official’s smile became any broader, his ears would have fallen off: he had a very wide mouth to begin with. His chest swelled and he waved his arms around vigorously.
“I take it you embellished my thanks?” I commented as we left the room.
“Just a bit,” Hermes said blandly.
“What now? Are we done?”
“Not quite. Now we visit the clinic.”
“Clinic?”
“To get your translator fitted.”
“Oh. Will I have to pay?”
“No. A standard translator is the right of every Galactic citizen.” He looked askance. “Of course, you can always get a superior model… for a price.”
“But I don’t have any money.”
He grinned. “You don’t need any; you’re the Lottery Winner. At the moment this doesn’t seem like much but, after the presentation, whatever you want…” he spread his hands.
“I don’t quite understand.”
He spotted a bench and guided me towards it.
“Look, in the three days I’ve known you I’ve come to think of you as a friend.” His tone was serious.
“The feeling is reciprocated,” I said equally seriously.
“As a friend, I’m going to give you some advice. You’re the Lottery Winner. Now you and I know that the reason is simply that your identity rose to the surface of the… pool, for want of a better word, for reasons nobody understands. But most sentient beings believe it’s because you are someone special. Oh…,” he realised what he’d said, “…you are someone special, but you’re not a Good Luck talisman or blessed by the gods or endowed with supernatural powers or anything like that.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“Many beings will be convinced that you, somehow, will bring them good fortune. Others, knowing you occupy a special and privileged position, will try to influence you to speak favourably about them. I see from your expression that you’re familiar with that concept. That makes it easier. The long and short of it is that, as soon as the Presentation ceremony is officially over, you’ll be fair game. Beings will be clamouring for your attention. They will want you to visit their premises, patronise their products, speak on their behalf to whomever. They will offer you incentives; free outings, money, luxury items, women, narcotics… everything and anything. You are ignorant and you won’t be able to distinguish between a genuine ‘come for a free meal to my restaurant because then I can say ‘as patronised by the Lottery Winner’ on my advertising’ and the ‘if I get him hooked on this highly addictive and illegal substance I can control him’ offers. If you aren’t very careful, you can end up in a very nasty situation.”
I was now thoroughly alarmed. He held up a calming hand.
“I’ve painted a deliberately bleak picture. You forget that the Commission has a vested interest in your continued well-being… the breeding programme. They can, and generally do, arrange it that this is stretched until the initial furore has died down. The lobbyists and hawkers know this, but it doesn’t stop them trying. However, and here I speak purely as a friend, bear in mind that the Lottery has its own agenda. While they are interested in preserving your health and sanity, this is only because it suits their purposes.”
I nodded slowly as I absorbed this information.
“I appreciate the warning, especially as you probably shouldn’t have spoken as frankly as you did. I will be wary.” I gave a sudden feral grin. “Maybe I can use this to my own advantage.”
“I hope you won’t hurt the Lottery but, otherwise…” his grin matched mine. “…I wish you the best of luck. Now, we’d better get moving or they’ll think we’ve run away.”
Hospitals would seem to be hospitals the galaxy over. I could have been led into this one blindfolded and I’d have know I was in a medical facility the moment I could see. Even though the woman who greeted us had green hair and a complexion tinged with orange her whole demeanour said she was a nurse.
I was seated in something that resembled a dentist’s chair to which I was lightly secured and the nurse pressed something against my arm.
“Are you all right?” she asked as the blur before my eyes resolved itself into her face.
“A bit dizzy but otherwise fine, thanks,” I said, then stopped. A grin spread over my face. “The operation was a success.”
She looked a bit startled then smiled. “Good. I’ll fetch the doctor.”
Like nurses, doctors seem to be doctors the galaxy over. Although this one had a long face that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a donkey derby and was dressed in an iridescent green robe, he bustled in with that air of studied professional harassed calm that doctors must perfect in front of their bedroom mirrors.
“Ah, you are awake. That is good.”
It seemed a particularly inane thing to say as, if I’d not been awake, he wouldn’t be here. He poked and prodded for a while and declared me fit. The nurse gave me instructions about the translator which amounted to nothing. It was supposed to automatically detect the language of the speaker and translate it into English. If the speaker had a translator, I should speak in English and their translator would automatically transl
ate it into their native tongue. Translators for travellers likely to visit backwater planets where beings did not possess translators or for teachers and the like who dealt with immature beings of other species had an additional function. They could take my words and translate them into the being’s native tongue. To invoke this function all I needed to do was tap the side of my head with, say, the heel of my hand. That, at least, explained Hermes’ odd behaviour on my doorstep. The very best translators of all, one of which I’d just been fitted with, would learn new languages. They did this by opening a connection to an ibic and could use the ibic’s power to decode a previously unknown language. Of course, if you weren't able to contact an ibic…
I was a little bemused as I left the clinic. All around me what had previously been a babble of random noise was now meaningful speech. Hermes was watching me with an amused expression.
“You’ll find it a little disconcerting at first,” he said. “You’ll see a being’s mouth move, but the words you hear won’t match the movement. You’ll soon get used to it, though.”
Now I’d been talking to him for the past three days, but it wasn’t until he mentioned the phenomenon that I noticed it and, of course, it was immediately disconcerting.
“If you’d just kept your mouth shut,” I grumbled, “I probably would never have noticed. Now I’ll be so aware of it that I won’t be able to pay attention to what’s being said.”
“Sorry,” he said sounding anything but. “There is a practical side to this. If you notice that your translator keeps pausing then either the speaker has a very verbose language or, more likely, he’s a pompous idiot. Conversely, if you keep hearing words after the speaker’s mouth has stopped then he probably was a very terse native language and I’ve noticed that beings with terse languages often tend to be on the rude and aggressive side. I just thought I’d mention it.”
“You’re full of these little observational gems, aren’t you?” I said with a laugh.
He shrugged. “I have to deal with a lot of different species under odd circumstances. Anything that helps me pursue my objective and achieve my goals is worth it, wouldn’t you say?”
“Okay. You win.”
As we stepped outside, the reality that I was on an alien planet really hit me for the first time. Inside the terminal, although the architecture was odd, the décor strange and the people weird, there was enough of a functional familiarity to an airport on Earth that my sense of displacement was suppressed. But outside! First of all the sky was the wrong colour. Our sky varies from pale sky blue to azure: here it was cobalt to Prussian. Then the suns were wrong: there were two of them for a start and they were too small and the light was too white and too bright. Illuminated surfaces glared, the slight parallax of the double suns gave the boundaries between light a disconcerting, three-dimensional effect and the full shadows were inky black. Thirdly, it was hot: not the sweat-inducing heat of the tropics or the dry arid heat of the desert but the heat of a grill. Within seconds I felt like a breakfast sausage. I could almost feel my skin sizzling.
A car was waiting for us. It wasn’t particularly large or luxurious, resembling a box on wheels except I couldn’t see any wheels. A being hopped out as we approached and opened the back door for us.
“Not quite a limousine,” Hermes said. “But, for now, we’re incognito.”
“What about our luggage?”
“Waiting at the hotel.”
“The cats,” I screeched suddenly causing the driver to look back at us in alarm. “I forgot all about them. I can’t leave them behind.”
“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “After we’ve got you settled, I’ll return and see to them personally.”
“Yes, but…” I started.
“Do you trust me?” he asked,
“Yes, of course, but…”
“Then trust me on this. I’ll sort it out. They won’t be abandoned.”
I sank back in the seat as the car pulled out into the traffic. “Well, okay. If you say so. Thanks.”
For the rest of the journey I gawked. Bartimarmiminniandriss was weird and huge. The name meant ‘City of a Thousand Holy Places’ and was the administrative capital of both Geretimal and the entire Capellan Theocracy. Dear had told me that about 25m beings lived and worked here. I thought that wasn't very many considering the size of the Theocracy, but was told that it was kept deliberately small. Only the headquarters of major industries, financial institutions, the Civil Service and so on were here. Dear had told me that nobody could be bothered calling it by its full name so it was known, to natives and off-worlders alike, as Bartimarm.
Tall buildings with oddly rounded contours seemed to be scattered at random among clumps of hemispheres piled higgledy-piggledy on top of each other. The one thing they had in common was a dearth of windows. The few there were were small and widely spaced. There were areas that seemed to be parks with tall trees that reminded me a bit of palm trees, but with huge, dark glossy leaves sticking out at random. There were vast curved buildings that looked like sports stadiums whose purpose I couldn’t determine. There were no gleaming spires or aerial walkways, no flitters or airborne craft, no hordes of garishly clad aliens. In fact there were very few beings at all and they were mostly of the same type: jet black woolly hair and burnt umber complexions with legs and arms that seemed a bit too short and disjointed and bodies that seemed a bit too long and round.
Having navigated the labyrinth that was the airport, our car swept round a banked ramp and joined a ten-lane highway without slowing down. Miraculously, as we approached the ‘give way’ line a gap in the traffic appeared and we slotted into it. The highway was busier than the M25 in rush hour yet all the vehicles in the five lanes heading towards the city centre moved at a steady speed with a precise gap between them. At intervals, vehicles would change lanes. The drivers didn’t signal but, somehow, a gap would appear and a vehicle would glide gracefully into it. Every so often there were on- and off-ramps. Vehicles would slide off leaving a gap. Within seconds the gap had closed as if it had never existed. After a brief marvel at the skill of the drivers, it dawned on me that skill had nothing to do with it; nobody could drive with that degree of precision. The traffic system was ibic-controlled.
The architecture changed. The buildings, still with their oddly rounded contours, became more uniform in height and size. The highway narrowed from ten lanes to eight to six and, finally, to four. Covered pavements appeared and there were more beings around. The traffic slowed until it was moving at no faster than an over-weight cyclist. We were obviously nearing the city centre. The streets became lined with, I assumed, shops. The crowds of pedestrians became denser. Now I was in alien land for here was the diversity of shape and form and colour you might expect in one of the most important cities in this part of the galaxy. I saw beings over seven feet tall with impossibly long legs and arms, beings so small and round you imagined they could roll faster than they could walk. I saw white skins and black skins and beige skins and yellow skins and green skins and purple skins. I saw heads with no hair at all and heads with an elaborately styled tower fully two feet high. I saw robes and dresses and trousers and jackets and shirts and skirts of every conceivable style and in every conceivable colour. The oddest thing, though, was that although the city was crowded, the traffic never stopped moving. The reason was that pedestrians and vehicles were segregated. At every junction, covered bridges crossed the streets, emerging from the building on one side and disappearing into the building on the other.
We turned off the main road, into a narrower street. A few more turns and, suddenly, the car turned into an entrance and we were plunged into darkness. The ramp dropped steeply. I realised we had entered an underground car park. We drove some distance, the driver controlling the car manually, and stopped before an illuminated entrance. The driver hopped out and opened the door.
“Here we are,” Hermes said.
“Here we are where?”
“At your hotel. Hop o
ut.”
I hopped. Hermes led me through the entrance into a plain vestibule with an escalator in front of us. Without pausing he stepped onto the escalator. We rose slowly and emerged into a magnificent foyer from which, to right and left, an impressive hall ran the length of the building. The foyer and hall had gleaming golden wooden floors and the walls were a burnt ochre. Around the foyer, decorative wooden beams arched up and out to meet in the middle. From the apex hung a massive crystal chandelier. The beams were intricately carved and there were carved panels on the walls. In discreetly lit alcoves were elegant glass cases in which were varieties of exotic plants. In the light from the surprisingly large windows, the wood glowed.
“It’s the oldest hotel in Bartimarm,” Hermes said.
Near the escalator was a small alcove. It was occupied by a decorative young woman… I know the correct term is ‘female being’ but… And I mean she was decorative despite her midnight blue hair, startlingly pale complexion and a face that was broader than it was tall. She smiled professionally as we approached.
“This is Crawford MacAdam from Earth,” Hermes announced.
The receptionist turned her smile expectantly in my direction.
I Won A Spaceship Page 6