Calm broke the silence. “Stay close. These people are insular and strange.” He made eye contact individually with Jamie, Deklan, and Jonny. “We don’t know what they’ll do, but judging from how we’ve been kept isolated here, they aren’t going to like us.”
Not ten minutes later the door to their room opened. It was the first time anyone had visited them since the doctor had brought Deklan there. It was Almsworth again. “All of you come with me.”
Calm nodded at each of them in turn. It was a reminder to stay close.
Gravity cut out, and Deklan floated into the air. He was surprised: he would have expected gravity at any port. Almsworth didn’t speak again. He just turned and floated down the hallway, making contact with his hands and pushing himself along.
Jonny shrugged and followed. Deklan took up the rear, after Jamie and Calm.
They passed from the room to the ship’s main airlock, which was open. Lining the dingy passageway to it were eight crewmen, each of whom made Dr. Almsworth look warm and welcoming by comparison. They all wore the same style of flowing red clothing that covered everything except the face and arms. All were men.
Calm passed Jonny and made sure that he was closest to Almsworth before letting the others follow.
Deklan noticed that the passageway was dilapidated. He didn’t have anything to compare it to except the Terra Rings, but there everything would have been refitted long before it reached such a state.
The passageway opened onto a small room where they were greeted by a group of nine men and one woman. The men were dressed in much the same fashion as Almsworth and the other crew members, though the red of their clothing was a deeper and more vibrant hue. The cloth too was newer. The woman was taller than the nine men and taller than both Calm and Deklan. Her head was uncovered, crimson hair tumbling down past her shoulders. Her clothes came to her neck in a form-fitting garment that became a skirt reaching to below her knees. Like the men, her arms were bare.
“Welcome to Tau Prime,” said the woman in a rich voice. She had the same accent as Cranston and Almsworth, but her words were understandable in a way that theirs weren’t. “We haven’t had visitors in a very long time.” She spread her hands. “I am AnnaLea, the First of Tau Prime.” She placed an emphasis on “First,” which clearly was a title, though not one that Deklan recognized.
“Thank you for your warm hospitality and rescue,” said Calm. It was the voice that Deklan had heard him use hundreds of times before they’d met, the voice that he used for public ceremonies. “We are indebted to the people of Tau Prime.” He finished speaking with a smile and a bow.
“We are sorry to have detained you,” replied AnnaLea, “but it was reported that you were found floating in space with an emergency beacon .There was no ship, no debris, and no explanation. We would like to know the circumstances that led to these unfortunate events.”
“Certainly,” answered Calm. “When I was rescued, the emergency beacon was taken from me. It has a record of our travels since we left the Terra Rings.”
Three of the men around AnnaLea stifled gasps; the others controlled surprised jerks or facial tics. AnnaLea’s lack of a physical reaction was telling. She spoke again: “We welcome the first men and women of the Terra Rings to visit our habitat since the great separation. This is a momentous day.” An ingratiating smile creased her face. “We will review the data from the beacon. However, to save time could you tell us your story?”
Calm’s voice lost its statesmanlike charm and became graveyard-cold. “We were attacked.”
AnnaLea’s face matched Calm’s voice. “By whom?”
Deklan held his breath. They had agreed to tell the truth, but there was no guarantee that they would be believed.
“We don’t know, but we don’t think they were human.”
There were more gasps, but this time no effort was made to hide them, and AnnaLea’s showed alarm. “You think that you were attacked by aliens?” she said.
“I know that it sounds hard to believe,” replied Calm, modulating his voice. “Review the information on our beacon. It will support our story.”
Nothing on AnnaLea’s face betrayed her thoughts. “Very well. I’m afraid that we’ll have to cut this greeting short. Your news is too important. Eric will take you to your quarters and give you a tour of our home.”
One of the younger men from the welcoming party stepped forward and partially bowed. “I’m Eric. Welcome to Tau Prime.” His voice lacked the polish of AnnaLea’s but was still the voice of a politician. “I’m to take you to your rooms for a repast and then for a tour of the habitat.”
Calm matched Eric’s tone. “Please,” he said, “lead on.”
“Because we’re on Tau Prime’s central axis,” explained the visitors’ guide, “we have to use handles to reach our guest facilities.”
The zero-gravity passageway they followed led to a tunnel filled with the moving walkways found also on the Terra Rings. Along the way was a series of handles in straight lines. A pedestrian, as it were, simply grabbed a handle and was pulled along. The outer bank of handles moved at a speed just above a walk; the three inner banks proportionately increased one’s speed. Deklan had only heard of these systems.
Eric grabbed an outermost handle, and Deklan followed suit. The method of transportation had some of the fun of a motorcycle, but more than anything else, given the weightlessness and rapid movement, it felt like flying. Other passengers on the transit system zipped by on the higher-speed lines. Deklan didn’t have long to look at them, but he had the impression that the habitat’s residents stared at the four strangers. All of these people wore the same red clothing that had been ubiquitous so far. The feeling of flying faded as gravity came into play. By the end of the trip Deklan was in gravity’s embrace.
Disembarking was just like leaving any of the moving walkways on the Terra Rings, but there was one major difference. Whereas the exits on the Terra Rings led to wide open spaces, on Tau Prime they connected to a warren of dimly lit tunnels.
Once the party was on foot it was obvious that local residents were either fascinated with or repelled by the strangers. Deklan noticed a correlation with age: the younger the individual, the greater the chance that he or she regarded the visitors with curiosity rather than revulsion. “Eric,” he said, “your people don’t seem to like us.”
Calm, Jamie, and Jonny shot sharp looks at Deklan, but Eric was unaffected by the comment. “Yes,” their host answered. “Well, you are of the outside.”
Deklan waited for more information, but Eric simply kept walking. “Have you had any problems with Keystones in the last weeks?” he inquired.
Eric replied with a statement that blithely ignored the question. “We’re almost there,” he announced. After passing tributaries in the tunnels that branched off to the left and right, they had come to a door exactly like all of the others at the end of a hallway. Eric turned to face them, his hand on the door and pride on his face. “Welcome to Tau Prime,” he said once more.
The door opened onto a massive open space that stretched for kilometers in every direction. Green plant life started within ten meters of the door and carpeted the ground. In the distance were skyscrapers. To either side there was no horizon but only curving walls covered in plants, small moving dots, and buildings. Deklan had a flash of understanding: like most habitats, Tau Prime was cylindrical in shape. The living space was on the inside of the cylinder, and if you looked up at the “sky” you saw the “ground” on the other side. The habitat spun like the Terra Rings, providing artificial gravity. Unlike the Terra Rings, however, you could see right across, or would have been able to were it not for the cylindrical body of water suspended in the “sky.” It ran the length of the habitat, a long river with no banks and no shore.
Small craft and people flew through the air. Some were near the ground, some close to the water, and others in between. Everywhere you looked there was activity, as in a hive of bees.
The area to which Eric had brough
t them was like a parkland back on the Rings. Deklan understood why Eric was proud. The expanse was beautiful, but Deklan felt threatened. The last time he’d been at a parkland in Boa Vista he’d been attacked and nearly died. “Eric,” he asked, “are there animals here?”
Eric looked puzzled. “Of course. There are bees.” He looked at the trees. “Isn’t that how you pollinate them too?”
“Yes, but what about dogs, cats, rodents?”
Eric looked even more confused. “What’s a dog?”
“A domestic pet.”
“Is it a type of bee that you keep inside?” asked Eric in all earnestness.
Deklan sensed Eric’s incomprehension. “What types of animals do you have here?” he asked.
“Bees and fish.”
“And what do you eat?”
“Fish and the dead.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cold Drinks
Jonny directed a stream of amber liquid from his finger into a glass. The sides crackled with frost. He passed the tumbler to Calm and repeated the service three more times.
Deklan joined the others in slugging back the cold liquid, which burned down the back of his throat. After Jonny refilled the glasses, the group emptied them again.
Eric had promised that food would be delivered to their communal apartment. Deklan’s stomach, which roiled with hunger, was still queasy at the thought of eating anything on Tau Prime given Eric’s synopsis of the inhabitants’ diet.
The four wayfarers stood in the kitchen of their quarters. The natural wonder of the floating sea and surrounding parkland made the space look drab in comparison. Old metal furniture and worn fabrics did nothing to combat the impression. The chairs looked as though they’d been made a hundred years earlier and had whiled away the time by competing for an accumulation of scratches and tarnish. The kitchen had a distinctly institutional feel to it, like a place where you might find down-on-their-luck ex-cons.
Calm summarized the collective thoughts of the group in one statement: “We need to leave.” He held his glass out to Jonny for a second refill. Sipping it, he said, “If we’re lucky, the First will want us as envoys to the Terra Rings.” His tone left no doubt in Deklan’s mind that he didn’t expect that to happen.
Deklan’s stomach rumbled again. “Jonny,” he asked, “can you give me a dense beer or something heavy and filling?”
Jonny winked. “I have just the thing.” He filled Deklan’s glass with a dark fluid that looked as though it could be week-old coffee.
Deklan was pleasantly surprised. The drink had hints of chocolate and molasses, and the texture in his mouth was silky. His stomach for the time being was appeased.
“So how do we leave?” Jonny asked Calm. “Obviously we no longer have a ship.”
“They aren’t going to want us to stay,” replied Calm. “In their eyes we have strange ideas, and if they don’t know what a dog is, imagine what other concepts have been suppressed.”
Deklan agreed. The idea of a people who didn’t know what dogs were was alarming. The residents of Tau Prime had been isolated from the rest of humanity for only eighty-two years. Not only would that forgetfulness require a purge of information, but it also meant that Tau Primans were not talking about their lives from before.
“Even if we found a ship,” offered Deklan, “where would we go? We don’t know what flight path The Burningsworth followed before we found it, and we don’t have a record of where we went afterwards.”
Jamie slapped a hand down on the table. It was made of metal and bent under the impact. “Boys!” She looked at each of them in turn. “Stop complicating this. We have to leave. If they won’t help us, we need the beacon and a ship, but even before that we need to stop jumping to conclusions. Oh, and Deklan, try to grow a new foot. It could be useful.”
A trio of dull thuds sounded from the door. A pair of older women let themselves in, wheeling a trolley laden with vegetables and fish. Deklan didn’t want to think about what other meat might once have graced those plates.
Both women had hair shot through with grey and faces covered in wrinkles brought on by a lifetime of hard work. Deklan didn’t like their smiles. The women looked as though they were somewhere between benign grandmothers and predatory crocodiles. “The First would like to speak to you once you’re done with your meal,” said one old crone, her voice warbling.
Deklan glanced at his companions to assess their thoughts. “We can go now,” he replied.
“But your food will get cold,” the woman protested with annoyance in her voice.
Calm stepped forward as the official spokesman. “We will make that sacrifice out of respect for the First.”
The ladies looked scandalized but acquiesced and left the food in the kitchen.
Eric was in the hallway waiting for them. “The First,” he said, “is waiting for you in her council chambers. We’ll have to fly.”
Just outside their building was an ancient flitter. It was another antiquated invention that Deklan had read about but never seen in person. Flitters were lightweight aircraft designed for use in habitats. They had an open design that was only suitable in an environment that was never going to see rain. They reminded him of convertible cars without wheels and with limited trunk space.
Painted unsurprisingly a dull red, the Tau Prime flitter was long enough to accommodate six passengers in three rows of two. Instead of opening a door, Jonny leaped over its side into his seat. Deklan frowned at his missing foot and joined him, entering the flitter in a more traditional and sedate manner, as did Calm, occupying the front seat.
After Eric flipped switches and gripped the stick in front of him, the engines whined. “Seat belts, everyone.” Eric sounded like a bus driver who aspired to be president. “Take-off can be bumpy,” he warned, “but she’s reliable.” A vertical ascent shot them straight at the ocean of water above the habitat.
Deklan’s brain did little flip-flops as he processed the idea of rising away from the ground to approach a body of water.
Other flitters buzzed around them, some going higher and others moving end to end closer to the ground. They were midway between the ground and the water when Eric reoriented them. The water now was ahead of them and the ground above, behind, and below them in a curved wall.
Eric didn’t alter their angle of descent but instead increased the flitter’s speed as they headed straight at the river. From the ground it had looked huge; closer up it was even more impressive. Wider than a kilometer on the short side, it filled the view ahead of them.
Deklan could see that the river bustled with activity. Flitters skimmed the surface, and raft-like stations of people were busily working in their red clothes. The surface undulated with waves like an untamed sea. Schools of fish jumped by the hundreds of thousands, their silver bodies making the water boil with activity.
As the flitter skimmed only a few meters above the surface, Deklan asked, “Have you had any trouble with the fish?”
Eric looked blankly at him. “From the fish?”
“Any attacks?” Deklan didn’t stop watching the surface of the water.
Eric’s sidelong glance indicated that he thought the question odd. “No. They leave divers alone, though I’ve never gone myself.”
Deklan stopped asking questions and sat in silence as they followed the water’s curve. Perspective played tricks with him when Eric adjusted their course to angle up and straight ahead at the cityscape that previously had been below them. He felt relief as they drew closer to their destination.
Eric brought them to an orientation parallel to the ground, although they still flew above the highest buildings. One tower stood out among the other structures, an inelegant rectangle that loomed over the rest. As Eric brought them closer to the building, Deklan was sure that it was their destination. A group of people on the roof was awaiting their arrival.
The flitter came to a stop and descended vertically, touching down with a thump that jarred Deklan in his seat.
<
br /> A ring of at least fifteen people surrounded their landing site, all wearing red and looking like professional security. Their faces were like carved stone as they stood rigidly at attention. Each of the men dwarfed Deklan in terms of height, shoulder width, and muscle mass.
“We’re here,” announced Eric, his voice not containing the slightest hint that such a reception was unusual.
Deklan opened the flitter’s door, hobbled out, and stumbled, going down on one knee with a solid crunch. Ignoring the mishap, he stood up again and held out a hand for Jamie. Her fingers were warm against his, and as he helped her down he whispered, “Either they think we’re dangerous, or the ruling class here is not well liked.”
For her part Jamie smiled sunnily, not disclosing that she’d heard him other than by the briefest hesitation in her movement. As always Calm looked unalarmed, but Deklan noted a forced aspect to the casualness with which he assessed the situation. Jonny also looked unworried, but he stayed near Calm.
One man broke the uniformity of their circle and came forward to Eric. “Sir,” he said, nodding without altering his stony expression. “They’re waiting for you in the large council room.”
Eric responded with a slight incline of his head. To the four visitors he then said, “Come with me,” striding forward as the ring of men opened for him.
Calm followed but made a subtle gesture with his fingers that Deklan took to mean “Stay close.”
Eric led them to a set of stairs that were inset into the roof. They were straight with a black metal railing down the center and tiled with polished white stone. Here too there was an impression of age but also of grandeur. The lights were a cool white that made the stairs glisten. Two stories down Eric brought them to an immense hallway with ceilings four meters high. The stone floor continued, but here and there the white tiles were interspersed with dark red ones. By the time they reached a set of doors, all the tiles were maroon.
Ornate double doors of anodized black steel opened to a council chamber where the First, AnnaLea, was flanked by two women and the nine members of the welcoming party. At least Deklan thought they were the same nine men. They had worn identical clothing and he’d seen them for so little time that he could have been mistaken.
Keystones: Tau Prime Page 13