The Universe of Things

by Gwyneth Jones

  Gravegoods

  They walked together on a bleak plain of seaside pebbles, captain and crew of the good ship Cheops. The sky was purple; it seemed to crackle at the edges. On a slab of shale among the pebbles, there was lichen growing. They had come to see it. According to Cheops’ computers this was the only life on shore — the only life on a planet other than Earth.

  “Imagine that,” said Merle, the captain. “Lying there quietly for millions of years, marching to the beat of a different drum. What insouciance.”

  They stepped out into unutterable smog. The ground underfoot was squelchy red dirt; the place resembled a tropical construction site under gas attack. They were inside their suits. Eyes that should have been streaming remained calm. Skin that should have been blistering and screaming felt nothing. They groped a little way into this muck and couldn’t remember why they had decided to leave the ship. Cheops didn’t come out from wherever it went in between unless it had identified some sort of planetary system. But it had never yet found anything like a habitable world.

  “I didn’t like that,” said Merle, back in shirt sleeves inside. “It was like being dead.”

  “How do you know? How would you know what that’s like?” asked Sugi, the engineer. She laughed hopefully at her own joke. No one joined in.

  Merle stared her down. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”

  They had been sent out in a spirit of the purest speculation. Cheops was the first crewed interstellar probe, ahead of its time and dazzlingly expensive. They were covering unimaginable distances, but inside Cheops there was no perception of the time and space outside. It was a small ship, the crew environment a poky cabin, in which they fell over each other, and another pod, reached through a diaphragm, where they slept strapped to the walls. This pod could be booked, by a scrap pad notice pinned to the soft rubbery doorway. If anyone lost the safety pin it caused great resentment. There was no gravity. A small object, once mislaid, could get absolutely anywhere.

  They said that being on board reminded them, variously, of the mouse cages in New Kyoto, of life on a non-violent ward, of hanging round a soup-kitchen. These were the lives they knew, none other. Cheops overcame the problem of interstellar distance by constantly disintegrating and reintegrating itself: slipping in a flux of particles from one strand of galactic spaghetti to another. Extraordinary techniques had to be used to prepare human beings for this performance, and it had emerged that a history of mild mental illness was the best primary indicator in selecting candidates for the new frontier. Further screening had identified the ideal minds, all of them with the same slightly abnormal brain chemistry: Dr. Irwin, Professor Shaw, Dr. Nanazetta, Dr. Ohba, Dr. Mihalavska. The scientific qualifications were required for public relations, just as long ago the men who would sit strapped helplessly in primitive projectile capsules had had to be career test pilots. In fact Sugi had no engineering to do. Irwin could add little to the computers’ analysis of climate, Sasha the anthropologist expected no field work. Even Nanazetta the physiologist was not regarded by anyone as the ship’s doctor. Merle was the captain: but her title was as irrelevant as the others. The group was supposed to operate on consensual decision-making.

  The five didn’t like each other, but that was no special problem. They were all of them accustomed to having poor social lives. Invitations to the sleeping pod were arrived at in roundabout ways. Irwin was frequently employed as a go-between, because he was thought to have a friendly smile — if you could catch him between his bouts of depression. Sasha was celibate; Nanazetta took this personally and nagged her about it. He bitched at Irwin too, because Irwin was black and therefore (by Nanazetta’s reckoning) had always been sneakily favored by the team back on Earth. Merle’s promptly announced and executed program of trying anyone available was designed to save her from rejection on a more personal level, which it did. It didn’t save her from general dislike.

  She guessed before long that she’d been appointed captain because of, not in spite of, her somewhat abrasive personality. Captain equals scapegoat. The only person who still tried to be friendly to her was Sugi, and unfortunately the cheerful engineer had quickly been relegated to the foot of the pecking order, with the captain naturally pecking harder than anyone.

  The days they spent in Cheops had the same hours as days on Earth and moved in the same way, aimlessly and uncomfortably. Alarm call, get up, have breakfast, go to work, don’t go to work, argue, have coffee. But the nights were long. When Merle lay in her bodybag, arms drifting above her face, she remembered strangely every bedtime of her past, when she had longed for just what she was given now: night unfathomable. Not terrifying extinction but sleep. Sleep for a hundred years, sleep without dreams.

  They were eating lunch when Cheops made its first landfall after the red smog planet. In the earlier stages of the adventure they would have been excited, but now, when their morning came — as Cheops emerged from flux within the system of a planet-bearing star — they went about their business as if nothing was happening.

  The designers of the Cheops project had set a high value on crew morale, which they knew was bound to be shaky. Everybody was provided with exactly what they most liked to eat, which made mealtimes interesting in an appalling way. Irwin ate nothing but organically grown haricot beans and fresh tomatoes, baked in olive oil and scattered liberally with chopped raw garlic and bombay onion. Nanazetta preferred huge hunks of practically raw meat, and had never troubled to learn to chew with his mouth closed. Sugi sucked vegetable soup out of a spouted beaker; there were hideous sound effects as she hauled up the tasty glutinous fragments that settled on the bottom.

  Merle was on the fourth “day” of a fast, and she was worrying Sasha.

  “You must eat, Merle. We must behave normally. For everybody’s sake —”

  She herself was eating carrot cake with sour cream: her tongue collecting delicious crumbs and smears from around her mouth. After a lifetime of guilty obesity, she was free at last, she didn’t have to care anymore. It was wonderful.

  “It’s a protest,” said Merle. “If you don’t leave me alone I’ll refuse to use the toilet next. And see how you like that, in here, comrade.”

  “Arrogant bitch,” muttered Nanazetta.

  Cheops tactfully offered a diversion. They had landed.

  Lunch was abandoned. The ship’s lander, in which the crew environment was embedded, had allowed them no sense of descent or impact. Only the screens told them that they were planetside and that exploration was possible. They stood in the lock, five glimmering figures packed close together. It opened, and the new world rushed in. A dozen or so smaller Cheops remotes jumped out and scurried away like active little silver lobsters.

  “Jibbooms and bobstays,” said Merle. “Shiver my timbers. I can’t believe it.”

  They appeared to have landed on a golf course. A serene, well-tended golf course, the rolling greens broken up by patches of flowering shrubbery.

  It was Irwin’s turn to name the planet. He decided to call it Ma’at, after the cosmic principle of harmony worshipped as a goddess by the Ancient Egyptians. He explained this in a rush of exuberance. He wanted to honor the race of the pharaohs now, at the moment when the project was finally justified, for their inspiration, their mystical influence… Merle groaned and rolled her eyes. Irwin’s mood swings bored her; and yet there was an awful temptation to provoke them.

  “I heard it was called Cheops because there’s never been a more stupid waste of more money and brains since the pyramids.”

  But everybody approved of Ma’at, nonetheless. Five gleaming dolls spread out: first stepping carefully, then walking; then skipping, running, prancing. After the Cheops — not to speak of their lives on Earth — this green paradise went to their heads like champagne. They ran around the bushes, laughing. Sugi picked flowers. Sasha knelt and touched the turf. It was really a close-matted creeper with tiny violet flowers. She wondered, could the machinery be programmed to tell her what this woul
d feel like to bare human hands?

  The Ma’atians arrived quietly: about fifteen of them. They came out of the trees on the edge of the glade where the lander stood, and stared. They were terracotta colored, humanoid, rather tall and slim. They wore few clothes. There were no signs of humanlike secondary sexual characteristics. The Earthlings were transfixed, embarrassed at having been caught skipping about like children. The silvery Sugi doll hid its flowers behind its back, and all five Earthlings heard her nervous giggle.

  “They can see us!” cried Sasha, confused.

  “Of course they can see the suits,” snapped Merle. “Contact! We aren’t equipped for this.”

  Captain and crew retreated, precipitately, back into the ship.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Fuck knows,” growled Nanazetta. “Have we any weapons?”

  “Make love not war…”

  “Will they be able to hear us? Will Cheops give us voices out there? We hear ourselves but that’s different isn’t it. That’s like the carrot cake…”

  The others, even Merle, ignored Sugi’s faux pas. Irwin was shaking visibly — head to toe hysterical tremors. “It always gets me like this,” he kept muttering. “New people. Strangers!”

  Merle laughed. “We’re not going to do anything. Cheops is God. Cheops will let us know what the rules are. Come on, ye lily-livered scum. Outside and enjoy yourselves. Captain’s orders.”

  The Ma’atians were still there. Some terracotta figures were examining the landing site, as if planning to present a bill for damages. Luckily it had been a soft touch down. Other Ma’atians sat on the violet flowered turf. They seemed completely, eerily unsurprised. The five heard whistling and clicking sounds, and saw teeth like white needles. Sasha spread her gleaming arms.

  “We come in peace.”

  Nanazetta was following the site inspectors, making menacing gestures.

  The whistling and clicking sounded articulate, modulated. Sasha believed it was language. “We come from another world. Do you know what that means? We’re on a voyage of exploration.”

  One of the Ma’atians came close and looked Sasha up and down. It (she? he?) gestured in an uncannily graphic manner at her, at the tiny lander.

  That’s a very small ship, it “said.”

  It peered around and waved its arms. Where’s the rest of the expedition?

  “There are only five of us,” explained Sasha. “We’re the crew of an experimental probe. We’re quite harmless.”

  (And the moment she spoke, she knew this was a lie…)

  Another Ma’atian approached Merle. It waved its hand across her gleaming breast, across its own body and announced (it seemed) something important.

  “And my name’s Merle,” said the captain affably. “Merle. My mother didn’t like me, she named me after a disease. I’m the captain here. You’d better take me to your leader.”

  The star of Ma’at was smaller and more brilliant in appearance than the star of Earth. It was descending in the sky, diamond-bright as Venus, as the explorers were led into the native settlement. The Ma’atian houses were scattered, with green plots between them. They had dark brown walls and white or red tiled roofs with turned up eaves. The party with the Cheops expedition shrilled and chattered; soon a collection of smaller, plumper terracottas had gathered, popping out of the little houses or jumping up from among the greenery. The plump ones were wrapped in garments. They seemed less phlegmatic than the first group. There were wild cries: somebody, Sasha saw, seemed to faint or collapse. There was a lot of urgent whistling, waving, and even physical grappling between the two groups.

  “These fatties must be the women,” decided Irwin, a smirk in his voice. “Typical feminine behavior.”

  He said it solely to annoy Merle: but Sasha answered thoughtfully.

  “Wait until I see them dance —”

  “Dance? Why should they dance?” That was Sugi.

  “They will.”

  Five of the plump terracottas finally came forward. They raised their arms face high, forearms crossed. They made expansive gestures. Our home is your home. Please, accept our hospitality.

  Later, after more gestural conversation and quantities of whistling, there was a banquet. It was served on patios of beaten earth outside the little houses. The Ma’atians did not appear to have developed any communal or ceremonial buildings: their welcoming feast was a street party. The tall slim ones ran to and fro between the houses with bowls of hot porridgy food, flat dishes laden with what seemed to be flowers, bundles of creeper stems, and oblate, double-spouted pitchers of liquid. The household that had been awarded the honor, or terror, of entertaining the strangers did not seem surprised to find that their guests could not or would not eat. Heaped dishes were brought to them, presented, and removed without rancor.

  Then the Ma’atians danced. They danced separately, and in small groups. They tumbled down the house steps and danced neighbor to neighbor along the little alleys between their gardens. There were no musical instruments. They sang and clapped, without losing breath, to give the time. They danced how happy they were to be alive and what a beautiful day it had been. They danced a little fear — not much — and a good deal of amazement. They danced wisdom and serenity, mischief and sex (these last were chiefly handled by the taller group).

  Sugi turned to the anthropologist, mystified. “Hey, Sasha. How did you know?”

  “Well, comrade?” inquired Irwin. “Which is which?”

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled, and felt herself hunching up in the suit, trying defensively as always to hide her horrible folds of flesh. “I don’t know. I haven’t a clue.”

  Nanazetta was muttering, “Watch out. Watch out. This could turn sour at any moment.”

  Sugi chortled “Oh shut up you old misery,” and thumped him playfully.

  The captain tried not to look at anyone, especially not at watchful Sasha. Her throat was swollen, and her eyes were stinging. She felt humiliated. It was the sunset light, the Venus sun now vanishing in a haze of gold; the flowers whose scent she would never know. It was the comfort and joy out there, out of reach. These things were getting to her as if she was maudlin drunk.

  Two plump Ma’atians came over. They indicated, quite clearly, that it was Earth’s turn to perform. Sorry, but no thanks, indicated the Cheops crew.

  Oh, but you must.

  Sorry.

  The plump Ma’atians were consternated. This failure seemed to worry them far more than the strangers’ arrival, their weird appearance, or their refusal of food and drink. Maybe they’re not human after all!, they whistled to each other. They were right, of course.

  “Well come on, why not?” Sugi was ready. “Let’s get down.”

  “No!” snarled the captain.

  “We can’t dance.” she told the Ma’atians, in English, forgetting to gesture. “We don’t dance. Not since we joined this expedition. We’ll never dance anymore.”

  The Ma’atians put up their crossed forearms, repeatedly; they made soothing gestures, apologetic at having run heedlessly into an alien taboo.

  “We want to go back to our ship!” shouted Merle.

  They understood that, too.

  Cheops had found exactly what it was looking for. It settled down in orbit to count over the treasure. Its landing party, meanwhile, behaved according to profile. Sugi was having a lovely holiday. She didn’t even have to eat the funny food. She made no attempt to try the limits of what Cheops allowed; in fact she rarely moved more than fifty meters from the lander, except when she joined organized excursions into town. She seemed to Merle to be constantly looking, on her little walks around the golf course, for a sign directing her to the beach.

  Nanazetta watched out for trouble.

  Sasha Mihalavska and Bob Irwin made notes. They established that the Ma’atians in this village had no meat or dairy animals. They observed what appeared to be several species of flying lizards (they flew like bats) and many things that looked like
brightly colored giant millipedes. These seemed to be the only large fauna around. The vegetation suggested an equable warm, temperate climate; wind direction was steady and gentle. Bob deduced — perhaps prematurely — that the Cheops had landed on an island. Sasha was not so sure. There were convincing indications, in the variety of artifacts and implements, that the Ma’atians belonged to a large and sophisticated cultural group. If this was an island, it was a big one. There ought to be towns, maybe cities, and yet they must be some distance away. No other natives had come to or left the village since Cheops landed.

  In the crew environment they typed up their notes, under Merle’s sardonic eye.

  The question of Ma’atian gender was not cleared up for many days, not until they’d evolved some quite sophisticated gestural communication. The answer explained the odd calm of their first encounter. Ma’atians were not well endowed with secondary sexual characteristics. Their apparent dimorphism was a matter of age. It seemed that their vertebrae settled together and major bones became more dense and shorter at maturity. The tall slender ones were children. They were very like human beings. If there were ever humans, that is, who lived in such perfect contentment.

  “What happens to you when you die?”

  Sasha and Bob had found an older Ma’atian, an “old lady” they called her, who was willing to be their confidante. Her social role was not clear, but she seemed unafraid of the strangers and accustomed to impart and receive knowledge. It bothered Sasha that she still was not sure whether her voice could be heard “out there” as it sounded inside her suit. Self-consciously, she mimed death.

  We go to another place, answered the old woman.

  “What’s it like, this other place?” asked Bob.

  He was becoming very adept with his dumb shows.

  The old lady thought for a moment, then made the sweeping gesture for distance. “Schoo… Schoo…Ichi…Icchi…” She thought again, and started away, beckoning. “She’s taking us to paradise,” crowed Bob Irwin, sotto voce.

  Not to heaven but to a blue lake, unsuspected before, beyond the terraced houses and gardens. It was the first body of water they had seen. The old woman crouched down. She made the mouth gesture they’d decided was a smile, and swept an arm over the water.