Mistworld

by Nina M. Osier

  “That's just what it is.” He'd had no trouble doing that, just by watching her. “Class M planets come in a lot of different flavors, don't they? Whatever that means, ‘Class M.’ I've always wondered, and I suppose Ewan knew. But in all the months he and I spent, well, cohabiting, I never thought of asking him! I guess because he didn't have to wonder, so while he was with me I didn't, either."

  “It's just a generic term for any world that has Earth-like surface conditions. An atmosphere Humans can breathe without supplements, filters, or any other special arrangements. A sun that's got the right light spectrum for growing plants we can eat. A climate that's within acceptable, if not necessarily comfortable, parameters. And so on.” Romanova smiled, as she realized that Sanibello really was no older now than Ewan Fralick at the time her firstborn died. “I understand it comes from a series of science fiction dramatizations that were popular around the turn of the 21st Century. The initial ‘M’ is for ‘Minshara.’ Which I suppose must be the name of the first Earth-type planet the fictional Humans of ‘Star Trek’ encountered."

  “Oh.” Sanibello nodded. “We don't teach much Terran history in our schools here. And no folk tales like that one, unless the curriculum's changed since I was a kid! But it's interesting, isn't it? How long we Humans spent dreaming about being out here, living on planets other than Terra, before it actually started to happen?” He gestured, indicating not just the steppe around the platform and the far-off glacial wall, but his entire home-world. Because he was so young that Mistworld was surely that to him. He'd have been born here, as at least a second-generation colonist and quite possibly third-gen.

  Romanova, whose ancestors had reached Narsai so long ago that it took a professional genealogist (which on her world was an honorable and profitable profession) to sort it out all the way back to the ships that brought them there from Terra, smiled in understanding. Oh, yes, she knew what it felt like to be proud of one's home! “For centuries,” she answered. “Or maybe even millennia. We were always meant to do this, Ishi. Now! Where's our welcoming committee? How are we going to get from here to your settlements? And please don't tell me we've got to walk! Not that far, and not,” she indicated the higher-than-Human grass surrounding the platform, “through that. The very idea's ridiculous."

  After which she added, “Isn't it?” Because anything could happen on this planet. It really, truly could.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  The skimmers, a small fleet of them, came over the horizon before Sanibello could answer Romanova's question. This world hadn't had time to grow population centers like those back home, so of course it would need good-sized personnel-carrying surface vehicles. Her home planet's little aircars would never be able to cope with a frontier planet's spread-out settlements. Narsai's people, except for those on its ranches and farmsteads, had for generations now lived close to each other in villages, towns, and cities. Which left as much land as possible free for agricultural production—but here on Mistworld, that ought not to be a problem. Not for a long time. Yet Narsai's settlers had planned, from the first days of settlement, for the time when their fertile lands would become scarce and valuable. Was anyone thinking that way on this planet's behalf?

  “The Misties either don't know much about their ancestors who built this ship, and the others like it, or they don't want to talk about what they know. One thing's for sure,” Sanibello said to Romanova, as he grinned and waved although he had to realize that the skimmers’ pilots were still too far away to see him. “If they thought this was a good place to settle, they didn't need the same living conditions we Humans do!"

  “How's that?” The color of the grass was starting to bother her. “I thought Humans came here because Mistworld had the right living conditions for our species. In the first place."

  “That's true only on parts of the planet, Matushka. And I guess that's not odd, is it? I mean, even on Terra there are plenty of areas where people can't survive. And more places than that where they can't grow anything. Deserts, polar ice caps, obvious problem spots. But does this look like a problem spot to you?” The young man threw out an arm, to indicate the expanse of grassland around them.

  “No. But I don't expect we should assume the place where those first settlers chose to berth their ships must necessarily be the best spot on the planet to live. After all, Terra's busiest spaceport is in orbit! And hard vacuum, I don't have to remind you, is a lot less friendly than this.” They would only have another moment or two to talk before others joined them on the platform, from below as well as from aboard the on-rushing skimmers. Romanova could hear the lift rising through the shaft behind her, and knew its doors would soon be opening. “What's wrong with this place, Ishi? From our viewpoint, I mean?"

  “You'd find out if you touched that grass.” Sanibello grimaced now. “Which is why I haven't let the others up here to look around while we're waiting for transport. Let's just say that anything growing in this soil is deadly. You don't have to eat it to get sick. You just have to get its sap on your skin."

  “Oh.” Daughter of Narsai that she was, Romanova immediately wondered exactly what this region's soil contained to create that effect. And whether anyone had run the proper tests to determine that the soil was, in fact, the source of the vegetation's nasty qualities. But they were out of time for having this conversation, because the lift was disgorging its first full load of passengers. All of them adults, thankfully. Linc, how close to ready are they? “They,” of course, being Dan, Rachel, and the triplets.

  Let's just say I hope there's no big rush. Her husband's return thought held wry frustration. We can haul them up there if we have to. But the hungry one's going to be screaming all the way, and then you know what the other two will do!

  I know. Join in! I brought up twins, remember? She sent back amusement, because she couldn't help it; but then she added, as honesty relentlessly pricked at her conscience, With a lot of help from K'lor and P'tara, of course. Tell Dan and Rachel there's no hurry, Linc. It looks like getting everyone unloaded is going to take some time. We're going to be traveling in skimmers, and Ishi hasn't told me where. Not yet.

  Ishi? Where's Ewan gone? Linc, able to communicate this way with just two people—Katy, and her daughter—didn't know what his wife had yet to tell him. And why don't they just ‘port us to wherever they want us to go?

  Ewan's glad to get out of Ishi's body, and I don't think we'll be hearing from him for awhile. Or any of the other so-called “Misties,” either. I suppose that's why we're not being ‘ported—but I'll ask. Romanova felt Sanibello's gaze on her, and turned her attention outward. “Ishi, my husband has a question. Why do we need the skimmers, when you've got teleporter technology that's much more sophisticated than the Commonwealth's?"

  “Oh, but it's not. It's much simpler, actually.” The young man grinned. “But it does need three things to operate. The equipment, which is on board the ships—integrated into them, so completely that we haven't been able to find a way to relocate it. A Mistworld native. And a body for that Mistie to occupy."

  “I see.” The Mistworlders, both native and adopted, were all back in their own realm now. Not one remained incarnate in someone else's flesh. “Now I've got a question! What did you call the “Misties,” before Narsatians gave them that nickname?"

  “You really want to know, Matushka?” Sanibello laughed. “What you called them when you negotiated with them, fourteen years ago. ‘Cloud-Folk.’ It sure is easier to say ‘Misties'!"

  Romanova chuckled, too. Then she asked, as the first skimmer nosed alongside the platform and as crew members who'd just emerged from the lift sprang to secure it there, “Where are we going from here, anyway?"

  “Each skimmer's from a different settlement. We've got to split you up, I'm afraid, because none of our villages can take on all of you at once. Don't worry, Matushka; we'll keep your family with you. And my wife and I live in a nearby settlement, so I'll surely be seeing you again. After I finish up
here!” Sanibello's gesture indicated the SHIP, hidden below the planet's surface though it was.

  “Will you be going out again?” She had to know that. “And if you do, will Ewan go with you?"

  “I don't know, Matushka. I don't make decisions like that.” He knew what she meant, exactly. They didn't have to be telepaths to share this particular thought: that by leaving Mistworld in Ishi Sanibello's body, Ewan Fralick had risked the apparent immortality this world had given him.

  Which, Catherine told herself, was the best measure she could imagine of how important Ewan and his brothers (not to mention the Mistworld “natives,” misnomer though that clearly was) had deemed their mission to Narsai. And, of course, to the other Outworlds.

  Funny how much worse death sounded, when you knew beyond doubt that there was one place in the universe where you would never really have to face it. This place. Mistworld.

  We're ready now, Katy. Finally! Linc's thought broke into her brief reverie, and after that the first skimmer's pilot was climbing out onto the platform to greet her. Admiral Romanova, the Matushka, to whom this planet's human colonists knew exactly what they owed. George Fralick and his fellow diplomats might have grabbed the credit for making peace with the “Cloud-Folk,” as far as both the Commonwealth and the Star Service were concerned; but the Human settlers who'd nearly lost their homes knew how it had really been. Even the relative youngsters among them, who couldn't possibly remember events from fourteen years ago (or could only recall them from a child's perspective).

  If I had Maddy with me, and if I could know for sure that Mum and Dad and the others back home are safe, I'd be looking forward to this! With that thought, the Matushka put out her hands to take those of a tall, silver-haired, serene-faced person whom she recognized only when the other woman spoke.

  “Hello, Captain Romanova. But it's Admiral now, isn't it? I'm glad I'm getting to meet you face to face, at last,” said the administrator who'd spoken for the Mistworld colonists, fourteen years earlier. “You're surprised. Does that mean Ishi hasn't bothered to tell you that he's my son?"

  * * * *

  Kerle Marin, the destroyed starship Archangel's chief medical officer, climbed into the skimmer last. Linc's clanstribe “cousin” (which on Mortha had a much broader meaning than it did on Narsai) took the last vacant seat, fortuitously behind Dan and Rachel. But not before he relieved them of their daughter.

  Are all Morthan men natural-born fathers? Romanova asked her husband, with a smile that barely touched her mouth.

  I wouldn't know, Katy. Where I grew up, my mother and I were the only Morthans in residence. Casey's thoughts partook of her mirth, but they also ached with regret. Regret for all the things most males of his species missed, because their late arrival at full sexual maturity nearly always cost them the chance to take mates of their own kind—and that meant they rarely sired offspring. In this much, Lincoln Casey was a typical Morthan “married man.” He'd fallen in love with Katy decades after he met her and became her friend, and when they finally married she was past the time when Human women could bear children without serious medical intervention.

  We treasure our young ones, yes. And nurturing them is a task for every adult in the community. So of course I have the necessary skills, and of course I enjoy using them from time to time. A different mental voice spoke to both spouses then, in warm, bemused “tones.” You meant to speak privately? I'm sorry. But from my viewpoint, you were doing it quite publicly!

  That's okay. I'm not used to talking to Katy around other telepaths, Linc responded. I've learned to shield what we say from Maddy, but I've never really needed to do it with someone whose mind's like yours ... oh, no. Are you telling me we've been an open book for all those telepaths aboard the SHIP?

  His clanstribe cousin's horrified realization made Kerle Marin chuckle inwardly. Let's just say that it's a good thing we wound up making such a short passage! he answered, in a diplomat's tone now. Don't worry, Linc. You didn't offend anybody. Misties are a lot more tolerant than first-wave Morthans.

  Thank goodness for that, then! His inability to take an active role in telepathic contact had earned him the scorn of his kinsfolk during his infrequent childhood visits to his mother's home-world, and of his Morthan classmates (all destined for medical practice like Kerle Marin, of course) at the Star Service Academy. But they could have told me. Told us.

  Katy, sitting at the skimmer's front, had to work at keeping her face straight now. She couldn't decide whether she wanted most to laugh at the situation's ludicrous quality, or feel embarrassed, or just be (as Linc was) relieved that there'd been no truly intimate behavior between them while on board the SHIP. If only because, as Kerle Marin had said, they'd barely set out from Narsai before reaching Mistworld.

  At any rate, they'd have to be more careful around “Misties” the next time they encountered them! At close quarters, that was; since through six months on Narsai she was fairly sure that Linc's failure to shield their telepathic exchanges properly hadn't created problems for their frequent guests.

  “Is everyone secured?” their pilot, the silver-haired Administrator Nadja Nah Trang herself, asked from her position to Romanova's left. Linc was behind her, as were the others. Their own family (which she suddenly realized now included Kerle Marin), and six others bound for the same village, on this craft that could carry a dozen adults. “Good. Then let's go! We've got a long way to travel, although not nearly as far as some of the other groups. At least I can promise you a hot meal, and enough beds for everyone, after we get where we're going. Which will be about four hours from now. We may hit some low-atmospheric turbulence, so for heaven's sake don't unstrap without telling me first. Better yet, don't unstrap at all."

  I hope everyone used the head, then, before they left the SHIP. Romanova, handling nervousness in the way she always had, aimed her irreverent thought at anyone in the vicinity who was capable of receiving it.

  The skimmer cast off from the platform, lifted, and shot into Mistworld's skies. All three babies wailed, and all eleven adults who weren't the craft's crazy pilot swallowed hard and tried not to give a great deal of thought to that waiting hot meal. Or to anything else that might tend to discomfit stomachs already somewhere between mildly unhappy, and downright scandalized.

  * * * *

  Well, Cousin, I guess you'd better teach me how to do a decent job of shielding! I'm really sorry, but that just wasn't a problem for me before. Ever, until Maddy showed up on Narsai six months ago. And then I had to teach myself how to put up a barrier, to keep her from overhearing when Katy and I wanted to “talk” privately. Lincoln Casey knew Kerle Marin well enough to ask for his help with only mild embarrassment. Sitting at his wife's side, he gazed down at Mistworld's surface—with the skimmer far enough aloft, now, so that his eyes and brain could discern more than a rushing blur.

  They'd left the steppe with its orange vegetation behind already. A cliff (one of gray rock, stark and majestic in its abrupt descent) divided that landscape from the one below. He could see a broad river, one loaded with silt, meandering seaward through a plain that had far more “normal” (to Terran or Morthan eyes) coloration because its grasses and trees were green. The same shade of green as the skies of Sestus 3, the Class M (but not particularly hospitable) planet where his parents had practiced their differing kinds of medicine while they were busy rearing him, their only offspring. He didn't think about Sestus 3 all that often, but right now he couldn't help it. Because Mistworld, too, had an eclectic assortment of characteristics that made its “Earth-like” qualities almost eerie.

  At least its atmosphere possessed no overriding aroma, though! He'd had no idea, growing up, that Sestus 3's stench wasn't normal. To his nose, it was Mortha that smelled funny—"like the liner's air, Mother"—during his visits there. But I'll bet if I went back now, I'd realize how bad it stinks!

  I don't doubt that you would, his kinsman answered, from the skimmer's rear seat. The one time I went there, I certain
ly noticed it! Linc, we've got four hours. I can teach you what you need to know in a lot less time than that, as long as this kid I'm holding stays asleep. And I think I'd better, since I don't believe the Misties are going to stay away from their Human pets for long.

  Pets? Do you really think that's how the settlers seem to them? The notion troubled Casey. He'd never kept an animal for companionship, himself; but from what he'd seen of such relationships, they definitely were not an appropriate model for interspecies associations.

  How can they think about Humans, and Morthans for that matter, any other way? Linc, they're immortals! Here on their own world, at least. The physician's thoughts sparkled now with impatience, and—for the first time since they'd met, in sickbay aboard the Archangel six months earlier—with that Morthan sense (no, “awareness” was a better word for it) of superiority over both “mere” Humans, with their inability to communicate properly, and over the likes of Lincoln Casey who should have been able to do that, but couldn't. For second-wave Morthan hybrids, now that he had the term to use. For what he was, instead of being like Kerle Marin. And like Kalitha, his mother.

  Okay. Let's get started. Regretfully, Casey turned his attention inward. Away from the delta below them now, as the river split itself into an intricately winding multiplicity of channels ... making its way, like the great rivers of Terra, to the sparkling expanse of ocean beyond.