by Alex Oliver
"My database confirms the response as correct in seventy-seven percent of recorded first contact situations," the doctor insisted, shaking his head.
"Which response?" Yas whispered out of the side of his mouth as the crowd parted and a woman wearing a cloak of white feathers strode to the front.
"What is your purpose, intruders?" she said, resting the butt of her spear by her foot.
Yas took a deep breath, but before he could get a word out, the doctor interrupted him. "Take us to your leader," he said.
The swan-feathered woman bundled Yas onto the train, seeming to deliberately ignore the doctor, who got on after her of his own free will. Behind them, a couple of tall, burly men with beards down to their waists got in too, and stood on either side of the exit, swords in their hands as if to drive home the fact that Yas wasn't going anywhere.
He tried several times to strike up a conversation with the guards, now that it was established that they understood Trade Talk. The guards, however, had remained resolutely silent, and the swan-feathered woman, standing at the prow of the boat-shaped carriage, seemed to be in some kind of trance. Was she guiding the thing with her mind? Or simply being dramatic while the wind blew her cloak back and the increasing light shone in her hair and on the oval brooches on her chest? Yas didn't care to hazard a guess.
"It is getting lighter, right?" he asked the doctor, only to find a sword blade slice within an inch of his nose.
"No talking to the abomination," said the guard with what looked like a whole sheep draped over his shoulders.
"What makes him an abomination?" Yas asked, but they had already shut their mouths and were looking out of the open windows again.
"It is getting lighter," the doctor agreed, voice perfectly level and unruffled. "Lambent, lucent, lustrous. I suspect the atmosphere is denser than initial impressions suggested. Though the sky is dark, I think it is because the light has been coming from the buildings and the ground. Now we are drawing close to a larger source of illumination, you see the sky above is growing a lighter blue."
Yas did see that. The little ship-like carriage slid between increasingly impressive buildings; two or three stories high, with shining shingled roofs and red doors large enough to admit a small shuttlecraft. The streets had broadened, and the ubiquitous bronze cladding of the sidewalks was relieved everywhere by planters full of vegetation.
Lush, fruiting trees stood in pots along avenues where well dressed folk seemed to be shopping. They slid past workshops and a street-corner concert with players of some kind of lyre-like instrument.
Often the people would be mounted on horseback, or driving livestock. Yas recognized goats and geese, oxen pulling carts. A cock crowed as they passed unstopping through a large intersection. It looked pleasant enough. Low tech, but not a bad way to live. No one in sight of the railway seemed to be fighting or starving, and there were children in every direction.
"I don't get it," he said, ignoring the guards’ glower. "Why would they live like peasants and then have a ship like this?"
"This ship violates every principle known,” the doctor reminded him. "Since the ship exists, it is our principles which must be adjusted. Data is needed."
"You don't think—"
"Data, not speculation."
Rebuked, Yas fell silent, watching the lightening of the sky in front of them. After another hour of travel, he realized he could see clouds, and the horizon seemed to be foreshortened as it is when one looks out over the sea, but the tell-tale glister of the water was replaced by a sheet of steam. The train slid on, undaunted, and plunged into the curtain of mist.
Yas's inner ear did something weird as he registered several shifts of gravity one after another. The world seemed to drop away from them, leaving them clinging onto a wall like a fly. And then the wall became a ski-slope and they sped down the inner side of the 'chariot' body.
Yas gasped. Here on the gunwales of the chariot he could see a tiny, blazing star on silver gantries so narrow they must be invisible from below. The sides of the chariot were clad in forest and meadow - clouds moving among the highest trees. The train burst out into the light of that tiny sun and it was warm.
Swans followed them with a humming skirl of wings. Yas re-thought his assumption that this was the work of a reclusive colony. This was a world in its own right. Rivers frothed down the slopes by the train's sides, and he caught glimpses of deer in the dark woods and sheep on the slopes. There wasn't a colony known with the resources and knowledge to build this. If there had been, the galaxy would have been buzzing with the news.
In the center of the chariot bed another city lay. This one was white as a salt lake. The roofs were covered with beaten silver and the walls were of stone. Flowers grew down every street and hung from window boxes outside every window, and every avenue was bordered in fruit trees and carpeted with growing aromatic herbs.
To Yas, whose family had been in the terraforming business for generations, it was a masterpiece of engineering on a scale that—like the cats-for-engines—ought to have been impossible.
Here the people were even better dressed, in garments of gauzy white stuff. The train began decelerating as they rounded a corner where a philosophical debate seemed to be going on, and almost ran into a seven-foot tall person in what looked like a toga. Their long hair was so black it gleamed almost blue. Yas had an impression of angular, delicate beauty as the person's face flashed up to register the oncoming vehicle, and then they were gone; disappeared between one breath and the next with no sign of a teleport lock or array to account for it.
Yas had no time to do more than blink about that before the train slid through an archway of silvery-white marble and stopped. The swan-cloaked woman stirred from her statuesque pose and jerked her chin toward the platform, and Yas found himself picked up by both arms and deposited there under guard. The doctor would have been left in the carriage, but he clambered out, and a pair of other toga-clad willowy giants tugged the little floating vessel away using nothing more advanced than ropes.
The platform sloped upwards, forming a covered tunnel at the end of which a rosy light flickered. Forming up around him, Yas's guards marched him towards it, the doctor trailing along behind them, in so far as a six-foot-tall humanoid made entirely of metal could be said to trail.
They marched him out into a vast room, where white trees carved out of the stone rose and burst into graceful cathedral arches against a golden ceiling. A long carpeted ride up to a dais was flanked by burning bowls of perfumed oil. The dais itself was stepped in steps too deep for human legs and capped with a throne carved out of a single sapphire.
In it sat a woman the size of a giant. It was hard to say exactly how tall she was, as she was seated, but Yas's head reached her bent knee. She was clad in a dress of crimson, that same gauzy material that her tall servants wore. Red-gold bracelets and arm-bands gleamed on her bare arms. Her neck was a forest fire of amber, gold and copper, interspersed with rarer gems, and her face was very beautiful. Even Yas had to admit that, and he rarely saw anything to write home about in human features. Even giant-like as she was—where any flaw would have been magnified if it existed—she was certainly very pretty.
"Look at them," the doctor nudged Yas's elbow as he came up to stand beside him. He slid his artificial eyes to the side to indicate Yas's escort, who were beaming the most fatuous smiles. Even the swan-cloaked woman was starry eyed, as if she could have stood and admired for weeks.
The giantess smiled and leaned forward so she could study Yas's face. But her smile faltered at whatever she saw there.
"I am Freya," she announced, as if that should mean something to him. When he continued to wait for the punchline her beautiful eyes narrowed and flashed. "I am your goddess returned. Our quest against the dark alfr is over, and we are returned home to take up rule over your people once more. Rejoice!"
Yas swallowed against a sudden uprushing of fear and confusion. Whatever she was, she was not the kind of alien
the NXA had ever met before. That made this a first contact situation. He should say something tactful, about working together for the benefit of all beings. But he didn't like the sound of "take up rule over your people," and "rejoice" really ticked him off.
"Rejoice?" he said instead. "When you've kidnapped my sister and my crew? I damn well will not. Give them back!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Introduction to the Goddess
Freya gave Yas that puzzled look again, as if she could not conceive how he was acting with such rudeness. But she smiled. "Your crew I can restore at once," she said. "Your sister... What is her name?”
“Dezba, of the Intrepid.”
“Ah,” she smiled graciously. “Then that may come, if you prove yourself to be a good servant."
I’m not your servant, Yas thought, biting his tongue to avoid saying it. Not anybody's.
Two actual servants came up to him then. One seemed human enough, a large blond man with a bushy red beard, who jerked his head to indicate Yas should follow him. The other was one of the tall aliens. On closer examination he was even less human-like than he had seemed at first. Yas struggled to imagine a real human ever being that beautiful—the creature had luminous skin. Literally luminous, his pale hands left tracks of light on the air, and his face was perpetually illumined in the most flattering way possible as if he carried his own golden spotlight with him.
This one had silver hair, long and bright as a newly minted coin. His skin was paper-white and his eyes were the dark, glossy green of holly. He wore silver arm-rings so numerous they were like armor, and a yellow flower in his hair that seemed at odds with his sombre demeanor.
"What are you?" Yas asked, brain to mouth filter once more disengaged.
The alien looked at him disdainfully. "Not as rude as you are."
"I mean..." Yas clarified, hearing the sentence for himself now it was out, "What should I call you? 'He?', 'she'? Something else?"
"You may call me Ruari," the creature said with a faint smile. "The son of Adair."
"Rory," Yas said, "Okay."
"Ruari," Ruari corrected, and stopped in the middle of leading them out of the corridor until Yas had got the pronunciation right. That was fair too, and Yas decided the creature wasn't so bad, at least on first impressions. Red-beard, on the other hand, strode on without waiting for them all. They only caught up with him when they came out of the corridor, passed through a series of small, walled gardens verdant under that miniature sun, and reached what looked like a small barn.
Something was crashing inside, and a voice Yas recognized as Mari's was yelling "Don't touch him! He doesn't know where he is!"
Yas pushed past Red-beard and sprinted through the barn's open door. Inside, Captain Harcrow had Chief Zardari held up against the wall by their throat. Zardari was purpling in the face, but their hands—clenched in fists—were pressed into the wall. They were restraining themselves from daring to take a swing at their commanding officer, but if someone didn't do something fast, they were going to be badly hurt.
Yas took in the standoff. Mari was between Keva and the Captain, hands raised in warning. On the other side of him, the Ambassador, Sasara, held out a hand as though she was trying to loosen the Captain's grip from a distance. Harcrow's dazed gaze flicked from Sasara to Keva and back as if wondering which one of them was the greater danger.
"Captain," Sasara cautioned, her dark voice melodious, comforting. "Whatever you're seeing isn't real. Please ease the grip of your right hand. No one will move, beyond that."
Sasara's hood had been either lowered or knocked back. This time Yas could see clearly her spiraling dark hair and the golden sigils on her black skin. Her eyes were lined in gold and glimmered with mesmeric power.
Harcrow swallowed and in the same moment, Zardari gave a deep and painful gasp.
"There," Sasara said, the smile more evident in her voice than in her face. "You are in no danger, Captain. This is merely a chemical dread. Consider putting your team-mate down. See how they trust you? They haven't made a single move against you since you attacked."
Harcrow wavered. He looked dreadful, Yas noticed. He was sweating and panting as though he had run a marathon and his pupils were blown wide. The arm not holding up his security chief was trembling so badly it was tapping against his side.
"I..." Harcrow growled, blinking as though he was trying to bring Sasara into better focus. He turned to do the same to Zardari, who had recovered enough to now be clinging to his wrist, taking their weight off their neck. "I—"
Harcrow’s dilated eyes widened. He flinched, though nothing had moved.
"What have you done to him?" Yas asked Ruari. The man had been slow and lethargic when he had met him, but functioning.
"I?" Ruari laughed. At the bell-like almost metallic sound, Harcrow's head snapped around. Yas couldn't tell whether the rage in his face was for Ruari or for something that only Harcrow could see, but the Captain dropped Zardari, turned and sprinted towards Ruari. For a burly, overweight man, he was amazingly fast and light on his feet. He sidestepped Keva's lunge, ignoring both Mari and Sasara calling out to him, and barreled forward. It dawned on Yas that he was not going to stop. He was going to take the creature off its feet and by the look of his face throttle it to death.
That was not the way to get Dezba back.
Yas jumped in front of Ruari and put his fists up as they had taught him in unarmed combat classes at the academy. They hadn't taught him what to do if being physically run down, though. Improvising, he tried to step aside as Harcrow entered his space and sweep the man from his feet with a kick to the back of his knees. The next thing he knew, his ankle had been seized and pulled. He tried to right himself, hopping, and Harcrow pushed on that leg and sent him falling over backward.
Whatever was wrong with the captain, his fighting abilities had not been touched. Yas twisted out of the way of a pile-driver punch that would have brained him if it had connected and felt a sudden understanding and sympathy for Zardari. He couldn't hit back. This was the Captain. One near assault on a superior officer was enough in a week.
"Captain!" Keva got close enough to intervene, grabbing Harcrow's fist as it came down.
"Restrain him," Ruari said, clear and cold, unexpected.
"I'm trying!" Keva gritted. She was stronger than any of them, but the Captain was doing a good job of kicking her on the places where her exoskeleton entered her flesh, and it was obvious from her cringing that it hurt unbearably. Still, while she was grappling with him, Yas managed to twist out of reach.
"Can you do something?" he asked Ruari—the creature was tall, but seemed fragile.
"Yes, if you hold him."
It wasn't assault if you were trying to help, right? Yas slithered back across the ground and flung both arms around the Captain's legs, almost breaking his nose on the man's shin as Harcrow continued to kick. With Yas as a diversion, Keva managed to pin Harcrow's arms.
Harcrow opened his mouth to yell or to scream, and Ruari swept in, a flask appearing in his hand. He tipped a pale-blue liquid into the Captain's mouth, laying his fingers over it to keep it shut. Harcrow blinked again, brow furrowing. Then he swallowed and almost immediately he was sagging in Keva's grip, sedated and out of it.
"Whoa," Keva smiled at Ruari with a tentative smile, and then at Yas and the doctor with something more familiar. "Oh, glad you made it, you two. We were going to send back to the ship for you, but as you can see, things have been a little fraught."
"We thought you were dead," Yas said as he helped her carry the Captain's limp body inside the building, the doctor trailing behind him, disregarded as always. Now that he could see the building clearly, it was not a barn but a kind of open-plan barracks room. Couches piled with fur lined the walls, and in the center of the room a wood fire burned beneath a brass cauldron where something savory bubbled. Jugs of what smelled like apple juice were placed in the sand on the edge of the fire, filling the room with a sweet scent.
&
nbsp; He thought about crawling through the upturned guts of the ship—the doctor with his legs wrenched off—while the crew had been resting in this little pseudo-medieval bower. Well, perhaps he couldn't blame the Captain for that, but the rest of them might have done better. "Didn't you think about us at all?"
"We knew it would be fine," Keva grinned, and even Zardari nodded, rubbing at their throat ruefully. "Freya would look after you, just as she's looking after us. Aren't you glad? Did you meet her? Isn't she fantastic?"
The doctor turned his head and raised one electronic eyebrow at Yas. He mouthed "Uh-oh," back.
Yas noticed that—squashed into a hole in one of the benches in the darkest part of the house— Desultory had changed his skin to camouflage with the furniture, as if he was hiding out.
"Can someone tell me what's really going on?" Yas asked addressing the whole crew. "Someone who hasn't been brainwashed?"
"We're not brainwashed," Ambassador Sasara put in, in her voice like pouring honey. "Young man, we have simply accepted a marvelous gift that the universe has chosen to bestow on us."
"Yeah, it looks like it." Yas nodded at Harcrow, who had been lain in a pile of furs but didn't seem to be sleeping peacefully. His eyelids were scrunched tight and sweat stood out on his brow as he shook even in sleep. "What happened to him?"
"Come, come in and sit down." Sasara gestured Yas and the doctor inside. They came in tentatively. The temperature outside had not seemed cool, but the benches inside looked soft and the fire was homely and welcoming. Yas sat next to the blaze, but the AI doctor went into the corner and folded himself down by Desultory. Something about that gave Yas the creeps, but Ruari had come in too and was now proffering him a horn full of the hot cider, so he let it go.
"She is your goddess," Ruari urged. "Returned to your realm after journeying in the galaxy you know as Svartalfheim. We didn't realize that humanity would change so much in the bare couple of millennia we have been away. That is a short time for us."