by A. A. Ripley
‘Yes! I have him!’ called Alan from his seat. ‘He is in Zelhir; that’s on the day side right now.’
‘Sure?’ said Hijinks. ‘No landing do-overs.’
‘I’m pretty sure. A human male, condemned recently to community service.’
‘He can’t be that bad if he got such a lenient sentence, can he?’ said Inan, wondering what would constitute community service on an alien planet.
Alan shrugged and fed the landing data to the navigational computer. Hijinks began the landing manoeuvres and Yi-yik-ke changed its orbit, leaving the Amalondian night behind.
*
They landed in the main spaceport of the planet, close to the equator. Zelhir-Abode-Focal, a large city, sprawled not very far from the spaceport, connected to it by a suspended conduit of a near-sonic monorail. They caught the transport and soon they arrived at the main rail interchange of Zelhir.
Inan stepped out of the track-car and stretched with pleasure. The sun was shining and the light felt warm and satisfying. She breathed in deeply. The air on Middlelink had been fresh, but still recycled and reused, circulating between the filters and the lungs of the citizens. Here the air smelled leafy and humid, like saturated soil, despite the city buildings rolling gently all around them. To Inan, it smelled like the very height of the Year Incline, just before the scales tip over the Midyear, a scent that was tickling gently the back of her tongue.
‘This is what summer must smell like,’ said Alan.
‘Summer,’ said Inan. ‘What a good name for a smell.’
*
‘What is the place we are looking for again?’ said Inan, while looking up to the shining, crystal-topped spires of the buildings around her. Hijinks and Alan were trying to confirm the address; the directional programs of their comm-pads had some kind of problem adapting to the local networks. They had been walking in circles for the past half an hour, trying to find the right place.
‘Happy Joy-Bright Memory Hospital,’ said Hijinks.
‘Is that a literal translation?’
‘Very funny, Inan,’ said Alan. ‘Do you see anything that looks like a hospital to you?’
Inan looked all over the place for some identifying sign or symbol that would confirm their location, but all she could see were wide roads and footpaths curved gently like streams surrounding tall buildings. The latticework architecture glowed softly in the early afternoon light, calling forth soft pastel colours from within the walls and entryways. Olivine foliage snuggled comfortably on the flowerbeds and spilled from decorative urns that lined the balconies and promenades. A soft hum of vehicles passing overhead and distant sounds of unfamiliar music mixed with the ambient buzz of the crowds that unhurriedly strolled about.
Inan observed the vamess around her with curiosity. The sheer veils, cloaks and robes concealed their graceful limbs and shielded their gold-and-cream-coloured skin from the sun’s rays. Their heads were furless and scale-less, carried high above Inan’s reach. The only decorations they wore were finely-wrought chains of shiny metal, which framed their large, luminous and expressive eyes. Inan suddenly felt drab and vulgar. Her olive-green skin seemed coarse to her, her horns crude in comparison to the vamess’ corporeal smoothness.
‘Found it. Come on, Inan,’ Hijinks called to her from an arched doorway. They passed through it into a large chamber, a nexus with a series of corridors and suspended walkways curving away in different directions.
‘Assist you?’ they heard a voice behind them. It belonged to a vamess wearing lavender veils draped in tight spirals around his body. His arm was gloved up to his elbow; the holographic conduits of the glove were shining through transparent material. He was looking at them with the patient gaze of a professional caretaker.
‘Yes, please assist us,’ said Inan. ‘We are looking for a human named Ure Ambrus.’
‘Wrong address, huh?’ said Hijinks.
‘A friend?’ the vamess said. ‘You came to share his joyful duties? Or just visiting?’
‘We are not, um… community service participants.’ Inan wondered if that was what he meant. ‘We just need to see him.’
‘See?’ he said. ‘No visible obstacles for that. I am the Hospital Greeter. I can and will assist you in finding your friend.’ The Greeter folded the fingers of his gloved hands and a small round holo-drone materialised just above his digits. He fiddled his fingers, setting up a program on an invisible interface.
‘Follow,’ he said. ‘And you will arrive presently.’ Inan bowed and thanked the Greeter and they followed the guide-drone through the corridors of the hospital. The passages were windowless, yet still filled with warm, natural light. On both sides there were doorways, each marked with vamess patterns, like strokes of a blade of grass dipped in ink.
‘There is something strange about this place,’ said Alan. ‘And I mean stranger than just a building on an alien planet, full of aliens.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Inan.
‘On your planet, is it normal to have a hospital full of singing and dancing?’ said Alan, pointing to a small gathering of vamess on the corner. A small circle surrounded a female. She was singing a melodious, ululating song. The crowd swayed and waved their arms in the air, joining occasionally in a melodic trill.
‘Let’s just see if the guy knows anything and then let’s get out of here,’ said Alan. ‘This place creeps me out.’
Inan shrugged, copying the gesture Alan used sometimes. They followed the drone through a walkway and into one of the smaller rooms. There were two vamess inside, a male and a female, which were tending to a person in a bed. The man on the bed was hooked to a thin web of sensors and various vital sign-monitoring systems. At first, Inan thought that the man was moving and reacting to the administrations of the two vamess. But then she realised that his eyes were closed, his breathing shallow and uneven. He wasn’t moving; it was his skin that crawled. Wave after wave passed under the surface of his body. Something was slithering underneath, bulging in places and then receding, just to press from within at a different point. Long, sinusoid shapes kept appearing over the chest and stomach of the man, climbing up to his throat and back down again. Inan could almost hear the sound of the skin stretched to the brink of tearing.
Inan almost forgot how to breathe. The three of them stood there without a word until one of the vamess noticed their presence. He trilled something to them; when he got no reply, his companion spoke tradespeak.
‘Be welcomed. Have you come to visit Ure? Are you friends?’
‘What… happened to him?’ asked Inan.
‘Our children grow within his body,’ she said, and placed her long-fingered hand where the skin bulged. The creature underneath shifted. ‘Look how they dance in the time before the birth. We are so lucky to have Ure; he is a resourceful haven. This is going to be the last brood, unfortunately.’ Inan’s mind pulled back, unwilling to process the information linking the graceful vamess to their parasitic offspring inside Ure’s body. She looked at her companions. Alan’s eyes were glossy with horror, his mouth pulled into a tight line. Even Hijinks, usually composed, took a step back.
‘Fretting?’ said the vamess. Inan detected deep surprise in the female’s voice. ‘Why?’
It took the force equal to a hydraulic pry bar for Inan to open her mouth and respond.
‘Forgive us,’ Inan said, trying to make her voice sound as neutral as possible. ‘Our ways differ.’
‘Differ from happy memory that is birth?’ asked the female, but Inan was unable to respond to that question. Her thoughts recoiled from the possibility of sharing her body with a parasite, eating her from within, even if this parasite would be a potential hatchling.
‘But we were told he was sentenced to community service,’ Inan said.
‘And how noble that service is! Most sentient species are the best hosts for the young ones, but we can’t ask
for that sacrifice.’
‘So instead you make criminals serve you for…’
‘We asked for a noble role in exchange for the history that was stolen. How would you punish a desecrator? The tombs of the Unsurpassed Moral Kings stood for millennia – untouched. We asked for a noble role and a noble role we are receiving.’
Inan called silently to all the Sages that they would help her keep the last meal in her stomach. Seeing a sentient being used as food, even if it was necessary to nourish the young, was almost too much to take in one go. She didn’t think that the Codex would even allow contemplating such a thing.
A being is a being is a being… Inan thought to herself. But not on Amalonde, not to vamess.
‘Let’s go,’ whispered Hijinks. ‘We’re finished.’
They departed, leaving two very baffled vamess and a dying human behind the door.
They walked back in silence. Inan had to keep herself from running. She wanted out. She wanted to be as far away from the hospital, from Ure and from the unborn vamess that were consuming him. The Greeter waited for them in the vestibule.
‘I was informed and instructed,’ he said. ‘Those are your friend’s belongings. I trust I can bestow them upon you as his time is short now.’
He handed Inan a small box made of lightweight material. She took it without a word, almost automatically. She wished nothing less than to get out of the Happy Joy-Bright Memory and bury herself under a mountain range. They extricated themselves as fast as possible from the presence of the Greeter, who was still looking at them with an expression of polite curiosity as they walked out the door.
*
They returned to the ship. Inan had lost all interest in seeing the city, or even mingling among the vamess. The vision of Ure Ambrus, devoured from within, was still fresh in her mind. She decided to look inside the box the Greeter had given them, just to make her hands busy and forget about the grisly spectacle.
There wasn’t much inside. A few transfer chips, their screens blinking nervously as the amount of tradeunits was nearing zero. There was a small comm-pad made for human hands, a few scribblings in human script on a couple of loose pages, and a few colourful pebbles. The only interesting item was a strange container, big enough to take up most of the space in the box. The container was a dodecahedron; its twelve pentagonal faces were all silvery-grey with an oily sheen. The dodecahedron was smooth to the touch and a bit warm. On the top face there was a circular display – blank save for the faint blue light that suggested there was a small power source embedded somewhere inside the box.Inan traced the corners and the seams of the box with her claw, but couldn’t see any latch, button or groove. She shook the box; the content made no sound, but she could feel the shifting of a mass that was concealed within. Suddenly, the box split open. Inan cried out as millions of mercury-coloured insects spewed out. Like a living wave they splashed all over the floor, making a buzzing sound like a decalibrated receiver. Alan and Hijinks came running, just in time to see the insectoids spread on the floor in a pool.
After the initial shock of this unpleasant surprise, Inan realised that they were not insects but tiny machines. Each of them was shaped like a miniature arachnid no longer than a few millimetres; their multiple legs sharp like tiny needles, their abdomens symmetrical, moulded ovals. With fascination Inan watched as the spiders started to fuse together. The arachnid pool started to coagulate and thicken. They were no longer individual spiders, but a clotted mass of metallic liquid, like a puddle of mercury. Then it started to thicken and bloat, sloshing and squelching. It raised itself, sprouted tendrils that were flailing and thrashing, acquiring both shape and volume. After just a few minutes, instead of a pool of melted mechanical insects, a silver humanoid stood among them. The replica seemed familiar to Inan, but realisation did not dawn in her mind until its eyes flipped open and it spoke.
‘I’m… alive,’ said the silver copy of Ure Ambrus.
Inan heard Hijinks utter a complicated expletive involving impossible biological acts.
‘That is not a polite thing to say, ki-jirai,’ said Ure.
‘What… are you?’ said Alan, beating Inan to the question.
‘I am, or was and I am again, Ure Ambrus. Professor of Xenoarcheology, formerly of Corvinus University of Budapest, Earth. However, I wouldn’t ask them about me if I were you. Academic differences, you see.’
‘How did you come to be inside this box?’ said Inan.
‘Personal nano-replication,’ he explained. ‘The process is as expensive as glory in the cani empire, but it looks as though it was worth every tradeunit I paid.’
He looked at his mercury-coloured body with great interest. He flexed his arms, ran his fingers on his metallic skin. The metal was shifting with his every move, its surface adapting to changes in the tension of his muscles.
‘If it’s not too much trouble, can you tell me where I am? Those boxes aren’t equipped with a window,’ he said, finishing the inspection of his new flesh.
‘You are on Amalonde, Zelhir-Abode-Focal starport,’ said Alan.
‘I wonder what happened to me,’ said Ure. ‘Wait, don’t tell me. It’s Amalonde so it can’t be anything pleasant. Or quick for that matter.’
‘Professor Ambrus,’ said Inan, pushing Ure’s fate out of her mind. ‘We need your help. We came from Middlelink especially to ask your opinion.’
‘Then you are in luck. My services are available, for the proper remuneration, of course.’
Inan quickly calculated the amount of tradeunits they had left from the pirate stash. After Yarg’s fees and travel expenses their resources had dwindled considerably.
‘That is all you have?’ Ure laughed. ‘I’m sorry but that wouldn’t even buy you an hourly consultation. Especially as I am in need of some hard cash, so to speak.’
‘At least have a look, Professor,’ said Inan. ‘And if the thing I show you doesn’t interest you we won’t bother you again.’
Inan pulled out the disc. He looked at it with intense interest, mumbling something in a human language, his fingers drumming on his metallic chin. He was like a fish hypnotised by the bioluminescence of an oceanic predator, drawn to it against its will. For a moment Inan thought he would not be able to withstand the lure of the disc, but then he shook the charm off like seawater.
‘Sorry, not for that money,’ he said finally.
‘But there might be more of those items where it came from. Imagine,’ Inan took a deep breath. ‘There might be artefacts, antiques, unknown technologies of some forgotten civilisation. All of that for you to research or sell. You have only to gain by helping us.’
‘What persistence,’ Ure laughed. ‘It suits you well, young izara. But I have just been dead. If you have nothing to offer right now, I’ll just go and celebrate my near-demise with what I’ve got. Then I’ll get myself a job that actually pays.’
‘Don’t you think you owe us that one?’ said Alan. Inan could hear a shade of resentment in his voice. ‘If it wasn’t for Inan you’d still be inside the box. Who knows how long it would have been before you were activated.’
‘It is true and I am grateful,’ he said. ‘But as interesting as that thing is, I have some catching up to do.’ He gathered up what was left in the box and turned to leave.
‘Next time I see you I’m going to buy you all a drink. But until then – I’m history,’ he smiled. ‘Xenoarcheology branch, that is.’
*
They went out to eat in a spaceport bar, a small food and drink establishment catering mostly to crews and loader-drivers. Normally, Inan would be delighted to mingle with spacers of every shape, colour and race, to be inundated with sounds of the crowds speaking different languages alongside the commonly-used tradespeak, swapping news and stories carried via the trade routes. But this time even the prospect of hearing the juiciest gossip from worlds far away was not enticing to he
r.
Inan just sat there, hunched over her vegetables, counting digestion stones out of a pouch as though they were precious chrysoberyls.
‘I don’t know what to do. I was hoping you would have an idea,’ said Alan.
‘Can we get somebody else?’ said Inan. ‘He can’t be the only xenoarcheologist available.’
‘Still no money,’ said Hijinks.
‘What should we do then, look for jobs?’
‘We might need to, Alan,’ said Inan. ‘How long can we expect to go on with what the stash bought?’
‘I’m pretty sure that—’ started Alan, but didn’t finish. Instead he froze, with his eyes fixed on the entrance to the bar.
‘What is it, Alan?’ asked Inan.
‘We need to go,’ hissed Alan through clenched teeth. ‘We need to go right now.’
She followed his gaze, but the only thing she could see was a group of humans dressed in freight-crew uniforms with a female leading them. She couldn’t understand what had caught Alan’s attention. She observed the group closely and then she felt her scales crawl. The female was the spitting image of Maud!
They got up to slip away unnoticed, but it was already too late. The humans had spotted them. Alan turned around, towards the back entrance, but stopped in mid-stride. The back door outside was blocked, too. Another group of humans were standing there, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.
The first group approached their table. The leader looked at Alan as if he was something that had crawled out from under a boulderfeeder’s belly, ignoring Inan and Hijinks completely.
‘Looks like you aren’t going anywhere, Alan,’ she said. Inan could now see that she was taller and wider in the shoulders than Maud. The colour of her head-fur was different too, but by the way she moved she might well have been Maud’s sibling.