Terra Incognita

by Connie Willis

  “What’s it like?” She glared at us. “They’re rude, they’re dirty, they break every rule in the book, and don’t let all their bickering fool you—they’re just like that.” She crossed one finger over another. “Nobody has a chance against the two of them.”

  “I know,” Ev said. “On the pop-ups, they—”

  “What are these pop-ups?” I said. “Some kind of holo?”

  “They’re DHVs,” Ev said, as if that explained everything. “There’s a whole series of them about you and Carson and Bult.” He stopped and looked around at Bult, hunched over the computer under his umbrella. “Doesn’t Bult eat with you?”

  “He’s not allowed to,” Carson said, helping himself to the meat.

  “Regs,” I said. “Cultural contamination. Asking him to eat at a table and use silverware is imperialistic. We might corrupt him with Earth foods and table manners.”

  “Small chance of that,” C.J. said, taking the meat platter away from Carson. “You two don’t have any table manners.”

  “So while we eat,” Carson said, plopping potatoes on his plate, “he sits there ordering demitasse cups and place settings for twelve. Nobody ever said Big Brother was big on logic.”

  “Not Big Brother,” I said, shaking my finger at Carson. “Pursuant to our latest reprimand, members of the expedition will henceforth refer to the government by its appropriate title.”

  “What, Idiots Incorporated?” Carson said. “What other brilliant orders did they come up with?”

  “They want us to cover more territory. And they disallowed one of our names. Green Creek.”

  Carson looked up from his plate. “What on hell’s wrong with Green Creek?”

  “There’s a senator named Green on the Ways and Means Committee. They couldn’t prove any connection, though, so they just fined us the minimum.”

  “There’re people named Hill and River, too,” Carson said. “If one of them gets on the committee, what on hell do we do then?”

  “I think it’s ridiculous that you can’t name things after people,” C.J. said. “Don’t you, Evelyn?”

  “Why can’t you?” Ev asked.

  “Regs,” I said. “ ‘Pursuant to the practice of naming geological formations, waterways, etc., after surveyors, government officials, historical personages, etc., said practice is indicative of oppressive colonialist attitudes and lack of respect for indigenous cultural traditions, etc., etc.’ Hand the meat over.”

  C.J.’d picked up the platter, but she didn’t pass it. “Oppressive! It is not. Why shouldn’t we have something named after us? We’re the ones stuck on this horrible planet all alone in uncharted territory for months at a time and with who knows what dangers lurking. We should get something.”

  Carson and I have heard this pitch a hundred or so times. She used to try it on us before she decided the loaners were more susceptible.

  “There are hundreds of mountains and streams on Boohte. You can’t tell me there isn’t some way you could name one of them after somebody. I mean, the government wouldn’t even notice.”

  Well, she’s wrong there. Their Imperial Majesties check every single name, and even if all we tried to sneak past them was a bug named C.J., we could get tossed off Boohte.

  “There’s a way you can get something named after you, C.J.,” Carson said. “Why didn’t you say you were interested?”

  C.J. narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “Remember Stewart? He was one of the first pair of scouts on Boohte,” he explained to Ev. “Got caught in a flash flood and swept smack into a hill. Stewart’s Hill, they named it. In memoriam. All you’ve got to do is take the heli out tomorrow and point it at whatever you want named after you, and—”

  “Very funny,” C.J. said. “I’m serious about this,” she said to Ev. “Don’t you think it’s natural to want to have some sign that you’ve been here, so after you’re gone you won’t be forgotten, some monument to what you’ve done?”

  “My shit,” Carson said, “if you’re talking about doing stuff, Fin and I are the ones who should have something named after us! How about it, Fin? You want me to name something after you?”

  “What would I do with it? What I want is the meat!” I held out my hands for it, but nobody paid any attention.

  “Findriddy Lake,” Carson said. “Fin Mesa.”

  “Findriddy Swamp,” C.J. said.

  It was time to change the subject, or I was never going to get any meat. “So, Ev,” I said. “You’re a sexozoologist.”

  “Socioexozoologist,” he said. “I study instinctive mating behaviors in extraterrestrial species. Courtship rituals and sexual behaviors.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Carson said. “C.J.—”

  C.J. cut in, “Tell me about some of the interesting species you’ve studied.”

  “Well, they’re all interesting, really. Most animal behaviors are instinctive, they’re hardwired in, but reproductive behavior is really complicated. It’s part hardwiring, part survival strategies, and the combination produces all these variables. The charlizards on Ottiyal mate inside the crater of an active volcano, and there’s a Terran species, the bowerbird, which constructs an elaborate bower fifty times his size and then decorates it with orchids and berries to attract the female.”

  “Some nest,” I said.

  “Oh, but it’s not the nest,” Ev said. “The nest is built in front of the bower, and it’s quite ordinary. The bower is just for courtship. Sentients are even more interesting. The Inkicce males cut off their toes to impress the female. And the Opantis’ courtship ritual—they’re the indigenous sentients on Jevo—takes six months. The Opanti female sets a series of difficult tasks the male must perform before she allows him to mate with her.”

  “Just like C.J.,” I said. “What kind of tasks do these Opantis have to do for the females? Name rivers after them?”

  “The tasks vary, but they’re usually the giving of tokens of esteem, proofs of valor, feats of strength.”

  “How come the male’s always the one who has to do all the courting?” Carson said. “Giving ’em candy and flowers, proving they’re tough, building bowers while the female just sits there making up her mind.”

  “Because the male is concerned only with mating,” Ev said. “The female is concerned with ensuring the optimum survival of her offspring, which means she needs a strong mate or a smart one. The male doesn’t do all the courting, though. The females send out response signals to encourage and attract the males.”

  “Like landing lights?” I said.

  C.J. glared at me.

  “Without those signals, the courtship ritual breaks down and can’t be completed,” Ev said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Carson said. He pushed back from the table. “Fin, if we’re gonna start in two days, we’d better take a look at the map. I’ll go get the new topographicals.” He went out.

  C.J. cleared off the table, and I threw Bult off the computer and set up the map, filling in the two holes with extrapolated topographics before I went back over to the table.

  Ev was bending over the map. “Is that the Wall?” he said, pointing at the Tongue.

  “Nope. That’s the Tongue. That’s the Wall,” I said, sticking my hand in the middle of the holo to show him its course.

  “I hadn’t realized it was so long,” he said wonderingly, tracing its meandering course along the Tongue and into the Ponypiles. “Which part is uncharted territory?”

  “The blank part,” I said, looking at the huge western expanse of the map. The charted area looked like a drop in the bucket.

  Carson came back in and called Bult and his umbrella over, and we discussed routes.

  “We haven’t mapped any of the northern tributaries of the Tongue,” Carson said, circling an area in light marker. “Where can we cross the
Wall, Bult?”

  Bult leaned over the table and pointed stiffly at two different places, making sure his finger didn’t go into the holo.

  “If we cross down here,” I said, taking the marker away from Carson, “we can cut across here and follow Blacksand Ridge up.” I lit a line up to Sector 248-76 and through the hole. “What do you think?”

  Bult pointed at the other break in the Wall, holding his hinged finger well above the table. “Fahtsser wye.”

  I looked across at Carson. “What do you think?”

  He looked steadily back at me.

  “Will we get to see the trees that have the silver leaves?” Ev said.

  “Maybe,” Carson said, still looking at me. “Either way looks good to me,” he said to Bult. “I’ll have to check on the weather and see which one’ll work. It looks like there’s a lot of rain down here.” He poked his finger at the route Bult’d marked. “And we’ll have to run terrains. Fin, you want to do that?”

  “You bet,” I said.

  “I’ll check the weather, and see if we can work a route through some silvershims for Evie here.”

  He went out. “Can I watch you run the terrains?” Ev asked me.

  “You bet,” I said. I went over to the computer.

  Bult was on it again, hunched under his umbrella, buying a roulette wheel.

  “I’ve got to figure the easiest route,” I said. “You can come back to the mall when I’m done.”

  He got out his log. “Discriminatory practices,” he said.

  That was a new one. “Why all these fines, Bult?” I said. “You saving up to buy a—” I was about to say “casino” but the last thing I wanted to do was give him any ideas. “To buy something big?” I ended up.

  He reached for his log again.

  “I need the computer if you want me to enter those fines you ran up with the rover today,” I said.

  He hesitated, wondering whether fining me for “attempt to bribe indigenous scout” would be worth more than the rover’s fines, and then unfolded himself joint by joint and let me sit down.

  I stared at the screen. There was no point in running terrains when I already knew the route I wanted, and I couldn’t look at the log with Bult and Ev there either. I started tallying the fines.

  After a few minutes, C.J. came in and dragged Ev off to convince him Big Brother wouldn’t catch him if he named one of the hills Mount C.J., but Bult was still hovering behind me, his umbrella aimed at my back.

  “Don’t you need to go unpack all those umbrellas and shower curtains you bought?” I said, but he didn’t budge.

  I had to wait till everybody was bedded down, including C.J., who’d flounced into her bunk in a hide-nothing nightie and then leaned out to say good night to Ev and give him one last eyeful, before I could take a look at that log.

  I figured Bult would be in the gate area, unpacking his purchases, but he wasn’t. Which meant he was still “tchopping,” and I’d never get time alone on the computer. But he wasn’t in the mess either.

  I checked the kitchen and then started over to the stables. Halfway there, I caught sight of a half circle of lights out by the ridge. I didn’t have any notion of what he was doing clear out there—probably trying to collect fines from the luggage, but at least he wasn’t hogging the computer.

  I walked out far enough to make sure it was him and not just his umbrella, and then went back into the mess and asked Starting Gate for a verify on Wulfmeier. I got it, which didn’t mean anything either. Bult could make more selling fake verifies than he makes off us.

  I asked for a trace, then checked on the rest of the gatecrashers. We had beacons on Miller and Abeyta, and Shoudamire was in the brig on the Powell, which left Karadjk and Redfox. They were out on the Arm.

  The trace showed Wulfmeier on Dazil until yesterday afternoon. I thought about it, and then asked for the log and frame-by-frame coordinates and leaned back to watch it.

  I’d been right. Sector 248-76 was next to the Wall, about twenty kloms down from where we’d crossed, an area of grayish igneous hills covered with knee-high scourbrush, which was probably the reason we’d skirted it.

  I asked for an aerial. C.J.’d sideswiped 248-76 on one of her trips home. I put privacies on and asked for visuals. It looked the way I remembered it—hills and scourbrush, a few roadkill. The visual said fine-grained schist with phyllosilicates all the way down. I asked for the earlier log. That expedition, we were south of it. It was hills and scourbrush on that end, too.

  The schist we’d found on Boohte wasn’t gold-bearing, and there were no signs of salt or drainage anomalies, so it wasn’t an anticline. And we’d had good reasons for missing it both times—the first time we’d been following the Wall, looking for a break, and the second time we were trying to avoid 246-73. I couldn’t see any indications either time that Bult was avoiding it. Even if he was, it was probably because the ponies would balk at the steepness of the hills.

  On the other hand, we’d gone right by it twice, and you could hide almost anything in those hills. Including a gate.

  I erased my transactions, took the privacies off, and walked back to the bunkhouse to talk to Carson.

  Ev was leaning against the door. He looked so sappy-eyed and relaxed I wondered if C.J.’d broken down and given him a jump. She used to and then tried to get the loaners to name something for her afterward, but half the time they forgot, and she decided it worked better the other way around. But I figured the way she was looking at him at dinner it was just possible.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked him.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, looking out in the direction of the ridge. “I still can’t convince myself I’m really here. It’s beautiful.”

  He had that right. All three of Boohte’s moons were up, strung out in a row like an expedition and turning the ridge a purplish-blue. I leaned against the other side of the door.

  “What’s it like, out in uncharted territory?” he said.

  “It’s like those mating customs of yours,” I said. “Part instinct, part survival strategies, way too many variables. Mostly, it’s a lot of dust and triangulations,” I said, even though I knew he wouldn’t believe me. “And ponypiles.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said.

  “Then you’d better be getting to bed,” I said, but he didn’t move.

  “Did you know a lot of species perform their courtship rituals by moonlight?” he said. “Like the whippoorwill and the Antarrean cowfrog.”

  “And teenagers,” I said, and yawned. “We’d better be getting to bed. We’ve got a lot to do in the morning.”

  “I don’t think I could sleep,” he said, still with that dopey look. I began to wonder if I’d been wrong about him being all that smart.

  “I saw the vids, but they don’t do it justice,” he said, looking at me. “I had no idea everything would be so beautiful.”

  “You should be using that line on C.J. and her nightie,” Carson said, poking his head around the door. He was wearing his liner and his boots. “What on hell’s going on out here?”

  “I was telling Ev how he’d better get to bed so we can start in the morning,” I said, looking at Carson.

  “Really?” Ev said. The sappy-eyed look disappeared. “Tomorrow?”

  “Sunup,” I said, “so you’d better get back to your bunk. It’s the last chance you’ll have at a mattress for two weeks,” but he didn’t show any signs of leaving, and I couldn’t talk to Carson with him hanging over me.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Uncharted territory,” I said. “But you’ll be asleep in the saddlebone and miss it if you don’t get to bed.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly sleep now!” he said, gazing out at the ridge. “I’m too excited!”

  “You’d better pack your gear, then,” Carson said.


  “I’m all packed.”

  C.J. came out, pulling a hide-nothing robe on over her nightie.

  “We’re leaving at sunup,” I told her.

  “Oh, but you can’t go yet,” she said, and yanked Ev inside.

  Carson motioned me out halfway between the bunkhouse and the stable. “What did you find?”

  “A hole in Sector 248-76. We’ve missed it twice, and Bult was leading both times.”

  “Fossil strata?”

  “No. Metamorphic. It’s probably nothing, but Wulfmeier was on Dazil yesterday afternoon, and verified on Starting Gate. I don’t think he’s either place.”

  “What do you think he’s doing? Mining?”

  “Maybe. Or using it as headquarters while he looks around.”

  “Where’d you say it was?”

  “Sector 248-76.”

  “My shit,” he said softly. “That’s awfully close to 246-73. If it is Wulfmeier, he’s bound to find it. You’re right. We’d better get out there.” He shook his head. “I wish we weren’t stuck taking this loaner with us. What was he doing out here? Resting between rounds with C.J.?”

  “We were discussing mating customs,” I said.

  “Sexozoologist!” he said. “Sex can mess up an expedition quicker than anything.”

  “Ev can handle C.J. Besides, she’s not going on the expedition.”

  “It’s not C.J. I’m worried about.”

  “What are you worried about, then? Him trying to name one of the tributaries Crissa Creek? Him building a nest fifty times his size? What?”

  “Never mind,” he said, and stomped off toward the gate area. “I’ll tell Bult,” he said. “You load the ponies.”

  Expedition 184: Day 1

  We ended up having C.J. fly us as far as the Tongue. Carson and I tallied up how long it would take to get to uncharted territory and how many fines we’d run up on the way and decided it was cheaper to go by heli, even with the airborne vehicle fines. And C.J. was overjoyed to have a few last chances at Ev. She kept him up front with her the whole way.