Ascending

by James Alan Gardner

6 For examining distant objects, it is very convenient to be able to see through your thumb, nail and all. The curve of my nail gives a slight magnification; if I line up my thumbs at the right distance in front of my eye, I can get a telescope effect.

  11

  WHEREIN I MAKE FIRST CONTACT WITH THE HUMAN RACE

  Snared

  One second, there was only blackness in front of us; then there was the slim white baton of a Technocracy vessel, stretched across the stars. Its FTL field wagged out behind it in a long milky tail, like a well-fed eel drifting lazily in a starry river’s currents.

  “We should speak greetings to the humans,” I said. “We should assure them we are sentient citizens.”

  “Can’t,” Uclod answered, wiping his nose with his bare wrist.

  “Without Starbiter,” Lajoolie told me, “we have no communication system. We can’t transmit or receive.”

  Uclod gave a snort that threatened to degenerate once again into weeping…so I said nothing more.

  Slowly, the navy ship came about—the knobby ball on its nose swung away from us, until all we could see was the round cross-section of the ship’s hind end. The FTL field swished its tail in our faces like an ill-mannered cat. Then a bright red beam shot toward us, shining pinkish light through the clear membranes that served as our “windows.”

  “That’s it then,” Uclod said in a hoarse voice. “They’ve grabbed us.”

  “Better them than the Shaddill,” I told him—hoping my words were true.

  “Yeah, well…I won’t be the first Unorr sent to a prison planet.”

  “We can survive it,” Lajoolie said. “And thanks to Admiral York, your family knows all the places the High Council hides political prisoners. Your cousins will rescue us eventually.”

  Uclod’s lips tilted up in the ghost of a smile. “There is that.” Then he turned his gaze back to the ship outside.

  Coming Aboard

  The red beam worked like a rope, reeling us toward the navy ship. I wondered if we would feel anything as we passed through the edge of the milky FTL field…but there was only the softest jerk forward, and a tiny bit of dizziness wherein my toes felt momentarily tingly.

  Ahead of us, a great round door opened in the rear of the ship—almost big enough to have swallowed Starbiter whole, so our single section of lung slipped inside easily. The instant we crossed the threshold, gravity returned; we slammed down hard onto a metal floor, bounced once, and juddered forward until we jolted to a stop against the far wall. Hmmph, I thought, these navy humans are clumsy. Either that, or they are intentionally treating us coarsely because they are great arrogant bullies.

  Uclod let out his breath. “Okay…okay…okay…” He was talking to himself more than the rest of us. “Okay, we’re here.” He glanced at me. “And we’re going to mind our P’s and Q’s, right, missy?”

  “I am always most courteous. Except to fools and crazed people.”

  “Damn it, toots, you aren’t filling me with confidence.”

  He reached behind himself and did something to the back of his chair. The straps holding him went slack, but did not withdraw into the chair as they had done before; I suppose the retraction mechanisms would not work now that we had been disconnected from Starbiter. With straps sagging around him, Uclod leaned toward my seat and loosened my bonds too. He said, “You’re on your own, sweet-knees,” then turned to untie Lajoolie.

  While I worked to free myself, the navy ship closed its hatch behind us, sealing us in completely. My view through the membrane walls was smudged with pinkish Zarett blood; but I could see we had been deposited in a large chamber with multicolored trees painted on the walls. The walls themselves appeared to be white plastic with a glossy sheen…all except a section high up on the back, which was rose-tinted glass. I assumed there were important navy people on the other side of that window, staring down and discussing our fates. From my current angle, however, I could see nothing up there but a bank of metal machines.

  Lights on the navy ship’s ceiling suddenly grew brighter, and the membrane walls around us made ominous crinkling sounds. “Our hosts are pressurizing the transport bay,” Uclod said. “Any second now, the place’ll be swarming with Security mooks.”

  Apparently, a mook was a humorless person wearing olive body armor and brandishing a truncheon or stun-pistol with great officiousness. A troop of such persons clattered into the chamber with bustling self-importance, racing to take up positions around our little chunk of Starbiter and training their weapons upon us in a most aggressive manner.

  Their leader (of a gender I could not identify, thanks to the armor and a voice more howl than human) shouted something that did not sound like words. One of the others jumped forward, pistol at the ready; the mook fired directly at our outer wall, and a splooge of noxious green splatted from the gun barrel. The substance must have been some Chemical—the instant it struck our chamber’s membrane, the tissue began hissing and spitting, bubbling up clouds of vile smoke. In less than ten seconds, a ragged hole had burned itself open, letting air from the human ship gust into our little chamber. The air smelled most foul indeed, tainted with a piercing coppery odor that must have been vaporized Zarett flesh.

  “Harout!” cried the mookish leader. “How, how, how!”

  “What language is that person speaking?” I whispered to Uclod.

  “Soldierese,” he replied. “Start with English, then skip any consonants that sound too effeminate.”

  “Hout!” shouted the mook. “How!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Uclod said. “We’re coming.”

  He took a step toward the gash in the wall. I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Wait—we must do this correctly.”

  I glanced around the room and saw what I wanted, lying against one wall: the black Explorer jacket I had brought from Melaquin. Snatching it up, I pushed my arms into it, discovering the fit was very fine indeed. The coat was not so heavy, and not at all tight; it also hung down to the middle of my thighs, quite long enough to cover my digestive bits if and when I finally forced myself to eat opaque foods. I took another moment to straighten the garment and fasten the strip down the front, just as I had seen Explorers do. Then I stepped out through the hole and historically made First Contact.

  “Greetings,” I said in a loud clear voice. “I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality.”

  For a long moment, nobody spoke. I could see the mooks’ faces through their clear visors; several appeared disconcerted to be confronted by someone dressed as one of their own Explorers. “I come in peace,” I said. “My name is Oar. An oar is an implement used to propel boats.”

  Someone gasped at the far end of the room. I turned and saw an unarmored person standing in the doorway.

  “Oar? Oar?”

  Festina Ramos hurled herself across the floor and wrapped her arms around me.

  A Fervent Reunion

  I myself am not given to spontaneous displays of emotion (at least not the happy hugging emotions), but I embraced her gladly with all my strength. When you think you have been captured by dire navy villains, then are unexpectedly reunited with your very best friend…well, of course, you are filled with boundless joy. You want to enfold her and squeeze her and say foolish things, thinking all the while what a mistake it was to don a jacket that is now just a stuffy barrier between the two of you.

  But it is odd how quickly boundless joy acquires bounds again: suddenly you remember you are being watched by little orange criminals and large-muscled women, by hard-eyed mooks and a cloud shaped like a man. In a single heartbeat, you become most clumsy and feigned—you find yourself wondering how you look in the spectators’ eyes, and you worry it is not quite proper to be all happy and hugging and open, for fear they will think you are an ignorant simple-head. Your body stance feels all wrong: your friend is so short and you are so tall that perhaps you look ungainly bending over her, like a great oafish giant stooping over a delicate flower. You tell
yourself, No, I will not push away my friend just because I have grown self-conscious…but you are self-conscious, and whether you choose to back off mumbling or to continue clinging with stubborn determination, it has now become a show for other people.

  Which makes you feel an unworthy friend for letting such thoughts enter your mind. You become most angry with yourself; and the next thing you know, you have stepped back abruptly, and you fear you might even be scowling.

  Why does one behave like that? It is a great infuriating mystery. But perhaps I should blame the Shaddill who created my race. They gave us defective brains, not only prone to becoming Tired, but also subject to floods of embarrassment at times we should not be embarrassed at all. I am sure persons of natural origin do not turn shy and standoffish during hugs with old friends.

  But I did. Perhaps I had even upset poor Festina by pulling abruptly out of her arms…so I forced myself to squeeze close again, then lowered my lips to the top of her head and kissed her hair. “I told you,” I said in a voice that sounded overloud, “I am not such a one as can die. You were very most foolish to believe I could be killed by a silly little fall.”

  Festina made a noise that might have been either laughter or weeping—I could not tell because she had buried her face in my coat. A moment later she stepped back, wiped her sleeve across her eyes, and gave a beaming smile. “You’re right. I should have known better.”

  It was pleasant to see her smile so happily, though Festina was exceedingly ugly, even for an opaque person. She had a large violet blemish on her right cheek: what she called a port-wine birthmark. When last I saw her, she had concealed the blemish under a patch of artificial skin…but now the great blotch was open to the world again, exposed for all to see. Perhaps she had removed the patch in mourning for me—which made me feel proud and throbby inside, though it also brought tears to my eyes.

  She was such a good friend.

  See No Evil

  “So, Oar,” Festina said with a laugh, “you’re alive and causing trouble again. Do you mind explaining what you’re doing in the middle of nowhere? And why your Zarett self-destructed a few minutes ago?”

  “We were fleeing the evil stick-people,” I said, hurriedly wiping my tears. “Starbiter died with great heroism, striking the enemy vessel and rendering it impotent.”

  “Enemy vessel? We haven’t seen any other ships.” Festina raised her eyes to the window at the rear of the room. “Lieutenant, did we register anything like that?”

  A disembodied voice answered, “Negative, Admiral.”7

  Behind me, Uclod snorted. “It’s time to repair your scanner, folks. The damned ship was hard to miss. Just before you showed, it was close enough to see with the naked eye.”

  “There’s the problem,” Festina said. “Our navy ships can’t see anything with the naked eye—we’re limited to cameras and sensor arrays. I once asked a navy construction contractor if it would really be impossible to build a nice simple porthole into every ship. She nearly had a stroke, laughing at the dimwit Explorer who knew nothing about preserving hull integrity.”

  “So you didn’t see the Shaddill ship?” Uclod asked.

  “We saw your Zarett whizzing along at the most godawful speed ever clocked. The bridge crew couldn’t believe their readings; they decided your beast must be suffering some cataclysmic flame-out, burning energy way beyond safety limits. They predicted she’d explode any second…and sure enough, she expelled your escape pod, then zipped away and blew herself to space dust.”

  “You didn’t see her hit anything?”

  “She exploded in empty space,” Festina said. “I was watching the vidscreen myself.”

  Uclod rolled his eyes. “We are so fucked.” He looked to Lajoolie as if waiting for her to agree, but she barely responded. The big Tye-Tye woman was attempting to hide behind foggy Nimbus, as timidly fearful as when she first met me.

  Apparently, Lajoolie was poor at dealing with strangers.

  “What’s wrong?” Festina asked.

  I did not know if she was asking why Lajoolie was frightened or why Uclod looked dubious about Starbiter exploding on her own. Since Lajoolie would not enjoy a discussion of her cowardice, I decided to take charge of the conversation. “Your Science devices are blind,” I told Festina. “The evil stick-people can obviously deceive your machines…and if Starbiter did not completely incapacitate the villains, they may be creeping up on us even now.”

  My friend called to the back window, “Still nothing on the sensors?”

  The unseen lieutenant answered, “Negative, Admiral.”

  “What about communications?” Uclod said. “The Shad-dill were jamming all signals in the neighborhood. Did you detect that?”

  Festina’s eyes narrowed. “We are having problems—we lost contact with the Admiralty navigation grid a few minutes ago. The techies are looking into it.” She glanced at the window. “Do we have communications back, Lieutenant?”

  The voice from above answered, “Not yet, Admiral. Still running diagnostics.”

  “Shit.” Festina peered sidelong at Uclod and Lajoolie. “You’re saying there’s a ship our scanners can’t pick up, and your Zarett smashed into it at some outrageous speed. We don’t know how much damage the impact did…but since our communications are still being jammed, the enemy wasn’t completely annihilated. Just fucking wonderful.” She turned back to the window. “Lieutenant—my compliments to the captain, and could we get the hell out of here at maximum speed?”

  “What heading, Admiral?”

  Festina glanced at me. “No point in going to Melaquin now,” she said, “and it’s a long way back to New Earth.” She turned to the window. “Aim for the closest inhabited planet—doesn’t have to be human. If we end up facing an invisible ship, let’s surround ourselves with witnesses.”

  A Christening

  We left the receiving bay with the horde of mooks clattering behind us. Festina apologized, but said it was now official fleet policy for outsiders to be watched at all times.

  “And I’m afraid,” she added, “the ship has dispatched nanotech defense clouds to keep an eye on your Zarett.” She turned toward Nimbus. “If any of your component cells go wandering, they’ll be imprisoned immediately.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “The High Council has recently developed a phobia about unsanctioned microbes aboard navy vessels.”

  “I don’t intend to spread myself thin,” Nimbus assured her. “I have to concentrate on my responsibilities.”

  “He has a child,” I whispered to Festina. “A baby girl.”

  My friend’s eyes went wide. “An egg? A living egg?”

  Nimbus rippled the mists of his belly, revealing the little ball nestled inside. “Not an egg,” he said. “A very young child.” His misty hands reached in to caress the baby. “As soon as possible, we should discuss her care. Nutrition, immunization treatments, optimal environmental conditions—it would be best if we could find an adoptive mother, but I can bring up a child on my own if necessary…”

  Festina was not listening. She knelt in front of the baby, her eyes shining. The front two mooks were also gazing at the infant with dewy sentimentality, though they endeavored not to show it.

  “She’s beautiful,” Festina said in a hushed voice.

  “She is stringy and gooey,” I clarified. “No doubt she is an excellent Zarett, but she is most unattractive, Festina. Is there something wrong with your eyes, or have you been crazed by an uprush of hormones?”

  Festina chuckled and got to her feet. “Don’t be jealous, Oar; I’m not going dizzy with maternal urges. But I like eggs—I adore eggs—and a little creature who resembles an egg, even if she’s already hatched…” Festina turned her eyes toward Nimbus’s foggy head. “What’s the baby’s name?”

  Nimbus quivered. His stomach closed, wrapping around and around the infant until he completely lost his humanoid form: becoming a thing like an egg himself, with the child swaddled in the middle. “Her name?” he said. “Don�
�t ask me, I’m just the father. I have nothing to do with my own name, let alone my daughter’s.”

  “She should be named Oar,” I said. “Then she would be admired and respected by all the world.”

  “No,” Uclod said, “I’m calling her Starbiter. That’s final.”

  He glared around, daring us to challenge him. Lajoolie laid her hand approvingly on his arm. Nimbus kept silent and I decided to hold my tongue too—it would be pleasant to think of a small young person growing up to carry on my name…but there are always things one cannot have, are there not? And having a new Starbiter was almost as good as having a new Oar.

  Almost.

  The Tale Of A Tainted Tree

  We proceeded down a hallway, passing many closed doors with trees painted on them. Festina explained these trees were hemlocks, because the name of the ship was Royal Hemlock.

  Not long ago, this had been the flagship of Admiral Alexander York himself, the awful villain whom Festina had slain. I wondered if she had received this ship as the spoils of conquest, like gaining ownership of an enemy’s possessions once you had killed him…but apparently the navy did not work that way.

  Festina explained there had been a Purge after York died, wherein Royal Hemlock’s former crew members got dispatched to unappealing posts because they were tainted by association with the late admiral. This left the ship almost empty…and the remaining high admirals quickly attempted to restaff the vessel with their own toadies. This was a perennial game amongst members of the Admiralty, each one endeavoring to expand his or her power by creating ships whose crews were loyal to a single admiral rather than to the navy as a whole. In this way, the admirals created ships that could be called upon for private errands—like the ones I had met near Melaquin’s sun. They had been sent to my homeworld to suppress the truth, even though their “official” duties required them to be someplace else.