by Ian Whates
The PoD waited by one of the tables, hovering a little above the floor. A squat and irregular elongated bubble of a drone, like a giant bullet; it bore blue and silver livery to denote its allegiance to local law enforcement. If ever a machine could be said to look tired, this one did. Its shell was scratched and tarnished, showing several small dents and at least one scorch mark. Here was a unit due an overhaul.
“Ah, Mr Drake, please sit down.” At least the voice, a woman’s, sounded bright and clear.
“I should warn you that I’ve been dosed with sedatives and painkillers,” he said, “so apologies if my answers are a little… woolly.”
“Duly noted. This won’t take long.”
Nor did it. The questions were direct and few in number, dealing with factual matters without asking him to conjecture on the motive for the attack. This wasn’t an interview conducted in the hope of actually identifying any perpetrators but merely for the sake of form.
As he left the galley, Drake couldn’t help ask, was that your doing?
No, Mudball replied. I didn’t need to interfere at all. Not sure I could have done without being obvious in any case.
Another useful titbit to be filed away. He had grown to accept the bond between Mudball and himself. At first he’d been far from comfortable with another presence inside his own head, but he soon discovered how adaptable humankind can be; a case of familiarity breeding contempt, perhaps. It meant that he never fully relaxed – never completely let his guard down. But even this was something he’d grown used to, to the extent where he began to think of the situation as ‘normal’; though, deep down, he knew it was anything but.
The most disturbing aspect of this strange symbiosis was that he didn’t really know what Mudball was. A leftover, the survivor of a client species that had been tasked with watching over the Elder cache where Drake first encountered him; the lingering afterthought of a long-vanished civilisation; that was how Mudball tended to explain himself. Yet there were so many topics about which the alien was unfailingly evasive: what the Elder civilisation had been like, the nature of the Elders themselves, what had become of them, even how old he was: how the hell should I know? I’ve been sealed up in a crypt for God knows how many centuries – you really think time has any significance for me?
If life was passing you by while you were stuck in there, then yes, I’d have thought that would be significant.
Humans! Mudball had become adept at conveying contempt when he wanted to.
One thing Drake did know was that he would have died in that cache if not for Mudball, which earned the little alien considerable leeway. If the chirpy little being that had just saved his life wanted to see the universe, why not? It made sense that a newly liberated intelligence would want to experience the civilisation that had sprung up in the wake of the one he’d known, and Drake sympathised with his saviour not wanting to become a test subject, a lab rat, an imprisoned zoo exhibit, which would have been Mudball’s inevitable fate if his existence became known. So Drake agreed to become his host, to hide him, pass him off as a pet, and in the process take him to see the stars.
He owed the little alien that much and, besides, he was an expert at keeping secrets. None of this prevented him from having reservations or from suspecting, on occasion, that Mudball wasn’t being entirely straight with him; that things were going on just beyond the reach of his knowledge and understanding. Drake had made it his personal mission to discover what.
While you were sleeping… Mudball said.
I was unconscious, he corrected.
Whatever. Anyway, to keep myself busy, I did some snooping and discovered an interesting little anomaly.
Anomaly? Of what sort?
The sort created when the ship’s records are tampered with to hide something that came aboard while we were off searching for engine parts.
Now that is interesting. I don’t suppose there were any clues as to what it might be?
No, none whatsoever. You can’t expect me to do all the work.
The interview with the PoD had taken a scant twenty minutes, which meant he still had a little time before the stimulant faded to leave his body wide open to the Doc’s sedatives again. A quick visit to the hold would seem to be in order, then, don’t you think?
Oh goody, you really do take me to all the best places.
Just be grateful I take you anywhere.
He needed to know exactly what had been sneaked aboard. Did it indicate that Pelquin was involved in some sort of elaborate scam and merely using the rest of the crew to get to the cache, with the intention of double-crossing both them and First Solar along the way…?
Before he could act on this determination, however, his reveries were interrupted by Pelquin. “Drake, a quiet word. I’d like your opinion on something. You’ve spent more time with our new mechanic than anyone else has; what do you think of her?”
Gods, why was the man asking him?
Perhaps because he knows you have a vested interest in the welfare of the crew and the mission, Mudball suggested.
“She seems competent enough…” he said.
“Do I sense a ‘but’?”
Now was his chance. If he really thought Leesa was a threat and wanted to get her removed from the ship, he just had to say as much. “Nothing specific,” he temporised, “but I’m pretty certain she comes with a considerable amount of baggage.”
“We all come with baggage, Mr Drake.”
“True, but hers strikes me as the sort that’s not easily ignored.”
“The fight, you mean? You think she was the cause?”
“Maybe, yes. It wasn’t a random attack; we were targeted.”
Pelquin shrugged. “We all have issues, Drake. So long as she leaves hers behind when we depart Babylon, I’m not concerned. Unless you’re suggesting hers are more than that?”
The pivotal moment. The last thing he wanted to do was let Leesa down again, but at the same time he had a job to do, one that Leesa’s secrets could endanger. “It’s hard to be sure,” he found himself saying, “but no, I haven’t seen anything to suggest this is any more than a local problem.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll take my chances. We need an active engineer, and it’s not as if I’m spoilt for choice right now. I appreciate your candour, but there’s not a man or woman aboard the Comet that doesn’t have their secrets, Mr Drake. Even you, I’ll warrant.”
Drake smiled. “Not me, Captain. I’m as straightforward as a man could be. First Solar wouldn’t employ me otherwise.”
“In that case, Mr Drake, I pity you. We should all have our secrets, each and every one of us. They help define who we are.”
“You may well be right, Captain, you may well be right.” With that, Drake nodded farewell and took his leave.
Very cryptic, and despite your misgivings you chose not to say anything about her, Mudball said. I never will understand the way you humans think.
Don’t worry, much of the time nor do we.
So, this Leesa, she really is an auganic?
Yes. And therein lay the problem. Drake was almost ready to accept that Leesa’s amnesia was genuine – she certainly hadn’t given herself away during their time together in La Gossa – but whereas he might still be in the dark about some aspects of Mudball’s capabilities, he knew full well what an auganic could do. So he couldn’t be certain she wasn’t faking it, and that lingering doubt was going to irritate the hell out of him until he could put it properly to rest.
Cool, Mudball said. Thought I’d never get the chance to meet one of those. This is all tremendously exciting.
No it wasn’t, not from where Drake was standing.
The hold was deserted, with deliveries made and the big cargo door shut for the night. There was a security camera, but Mudball ensured the image was recycled in a loop so that anyone who might happen to be watching would merely see continuous, undisturbed stillness.
Identifying the recently arrived crates proved easy enough. W
ith all that had happened in the past few days the equipment taken on at New Sparta had yet to be unpacked; nobody had paid it much attention beyond checking for bullet holes and damage. Crates that didn’t show any sign of either had been pushed to the back of the hold. The later additions – those brought aboard that day at La Gossa – had simply been stacked in front of the New Spartan ones. There weren’t many, either; certainly not as many as Drake would have anticipated.
Using his perminal, he scanned each container’s coded label, which Mudball then compared to the official inventory.
In a matter of minutes they’d accounted for all of them.
They all match, Mudball observed. I don’t get it, why bother tampering with the loading records in that case?
Patience, Pelquin advised, patience. There had to be something else, and, aware of his penchant for inspecting things, it wouldn’t surprise him in the slightest if Pelquin had made at least a superficial attempt to hide whatever it was.
Useful tool, a perminal; his was also primed with a number of apps specific to his job.
By common practice, packing crates for anything less than corporate scale commercial shipping were manufactured from genetically strengthened wood: a cheap, renewable, bio-degradable resource. Drake held the perminal steady, close to one of the crates they had already checked. A barchart of chemical components appeared. Next, he walked over and repeated the process with one of the crates taken on at New Sparta. The results were very satisfying.
Different, Mudball observed.
Exactly. Different trees grown on different worlds; their chemical composition varies in a few key indicators.
Clever, Mudball allowed. Now you just hope that one of the shipping companies isn’t recycling crates that originated on the other world.
There is that, he conceded, but if so we’ll try something else. For now, though…
It didn’t take long. Nate, and presumably Pelquin, must have been in a hurry; Drake found what he was looking for immediately behind the foremost crates: wood that had originated on Babylon rather than New Sparta.
No shipping labels of any sort, Mudball pointed out.
It wasn’t a large crate – by no means the largest there – but, lacking a gravsled or a powerlifter to help move some of the other containers aside, opening it took a while longer than Drake would have liked. By the time he succeeded and could see what was in there, pain and wooziness were creeping in again. Drake ignored them, determined to discover what Pelquin was up to before succumbing to the doc’s drugs.
His perseverance was eventually rewarded, though sight of the crate’s contents made him wonder whether the drugs weren’t kicking in after all. Using the torch facility on his perminal at widest setting, he stared at the compact curved unit and twin stacks of metal plates, eight in total.
“Well I’ll be…”
You know what this is? Mudball said.
Yes. It came as a relief, in a way. Yes, the captain might be keeping tight-lipped about things, but this didn’t smack of a double cross, merely of caution.
Drake centred the beam on the lettering, depicted in flowing script on the side of this innocuous looking engine: PTARMIGAN. The counterfeiters had even mimicked the proper logo. It’s called a Ptarmigan, after a mountain dwelling bird of Old Earth which changed its plumage to white in winter as camouflage against the snow.
Presumably it’s an acronym; the letters stand for something, right?
Not that I know of.
Oh come on, they must do… Phase Tension And Resonance… Ehm… Okay, maybe not.
The cute little name they’ve given it doesn’t really matter, Drake said.
Right. It’s what the thing does that’s important.
Exactly. He’d seen pictures of something like this, though he never expected to actually encounter one. It’s a dissonance field generator. Or, if you prefer, a cloaking device.
Drake fought the onset of fatigue as he made his way back from the hold, his feet dragging at every step. The last person he wanted to bump into was Nate Almont, so inevitably he did, in a very literal sense. The broader man turned his shoulder, clearly intent on catching Drake in passing. Drake saw the move coming and was able to twist out of the way, avoiding all but the lightest of brushes, but conversation was a little harder to evade.
“Now I wonder where you’ve been,” Almont said. “Snooping around as usual?”
“Merely taking my daily constitutional,” Drake assured him. “There’s so little room to exercise on a ship, don’t you find?”
Almont grunted, and Drake took that as his cue to walk on, ending the encounter before it could develop into anything more significant and before he fell asleep on his feet.
“I’m keeping an eye on you, banker, you remember that,” Almont called after him.
It was all Drake could do to keep his legs moving, so he ignored Almont’s parting shot and continued to his alcove – that little corner of Pelquin’s Comet that was his, however temporarily. Once there, he stretched out on the bed, lying on his back and trying to organise his thoughts before sleep claimed him. Mudball hopped down to squat on the pillow beside his head.
Events were mounting up, an accumulation that invariably created patterns. All Drake had to do was recognise and interpret those patterns. He started reviewing what he knew. A superficially senseless raid had come close to killing the Comet’s engineer. During the ship’s next jump a fault had developed which nobody still conscious was capable of diagnosing. The ship had landed on Babylon to seek medical and technical assistance. Pelquin, possibly in collusion with Nate Almont, had ulterior motives for coming to Babylon. As a result of landing there, Leesa came on board: somebody who knew Drake in another life, though she didn’t appear to know him now. While on Babylon, the ship had taken delivery of specialist equipment which the captain had hoped to slip aboard unnoticed…
Was all of that mere chance? Of course not; but that didn’t mean that all these disparate factors were directly related. It was easy to jump to false conclusions, to sweep up associated but quite separate occurrences and assume they were part of one unified pattern, warping the shape of the real pattern in the process.
The challenge was determining which facts were linked to which others and to recognise those that merely appeared to be. Nor could he afford to be wrong. But then this was one of his primary skills, and he did so enjoy a challenge.
Nate Almont sat at the heart of things. He was the catalyst that had set events in motion. It was Almont who had left the ship on acrimonious terms; Almont who returned after a year of doing goodness knew what professing knowledge of an Elder cache, and Almont who brought with him an artefact; the same Almont who disappeared for protracted periods whenever the ship was in dock.
Drake closed his eyes and set about pairing facts in his mind, testing them to see how they fitted and where they led. He knew sleep was imminent no matter how hard he tried to stave it off, and could only hope that come morning his subconscious would have unpicked the various threads and identified the true nature of the pattern. Only then would he know the best way to proceed.
He was dead to the world by the time the Comet took off and left Babylon’s atmosphere behind.
ELEVEN
As a child, Leesa had always loved the name her community had adopted, believing it to be the most romantic name in the universe: Liaise. She imagined the settlement had chosen this in honour of some ancient city of Old Earth and, to her childhood self, the word conjured up images of exotic wonder; of darkly handsome chisel-jawed princes guiding elegant swan-necked boats beneath dramatic skies, slipping silently along mist-wreathed waterways propelled by nothing more than a pole of burnished wood, while the whole world held its breath awaiting the outcome of their noble quests. The glint of steel in the depths of their eyes told you at once that these were not men to be messed with: strong, silent, and determined to be reunited with their one true loves. The women in question would of course be spirited and beautiful maid
ens, oppressed by the dictates of misguided parents and denied their heart’s desire; all for their own good, or so they were told. Pennants fluttered from flagpoles while water lapped against quaysides with ominous portent and cobbled, torch-lit courtyards stood ready for the long shadows and purposeful footsteps of determined suitors. Glittering masks were optional, but clothes were invariably long, flowing, and fashioned from finest silk, while love would overcome every obstacle.
Her dreams withered the day she learnt what ‘liaise’ actually meant and realised that the word was as unglamorous and utilitarian as every other aspect of her life. It was a label, not a name; no more than an apt indicator of the colony’s purpose. They were a human enclave on an alien world, scientists and sociologists bent on building bridges between the cultures of two very different sentient races, and she was merely a biological by-product of the length of time they had been there. So much for romantic fancy.
To an extent, then, she’d grown up among the aliens; though that wasn’t right, as her mum kept telling her, because on this world she and her family were the XTs – the aliens – while the Xters were the natives. Except that they weren’t, which was something her mum’s work later confirmed. The Xters were colonists just like them; they’d merely arrived a bit earlier – by a handful of centuries or so. The real natives had died out even longer ago than that.
The Xters weren’t hostile, though there had been a lot of posturing and brandishing of military hardware when the two cultures first encountered each other. Somehow, out and out warfare had been avoided, which was a shame by Leesa’s reckoning. She enjoyed nothing more than a good Warvie and the real thing would have been so absolute.
The prevailing peace was even more impressive given the one factor that, above everything else, had defined relationships between the two species ever since First Contact: namely that each was deeply repugnant to the other. Not for any profound ideological, religious or political reason, it was far more fundamental than that. The many-limbed, quick-moving Xters, with their multi-faceted eyes and cloying odour that sat somewhere between rotting melon and overripe corpse, awoke in the human heart a primordial fear that seemed universal. They weren’t really that much like spiders – only six limbs to start with – and even spiders didn’t inspire revulsion in everyone… But the Xters did.