No matter how much everyone was still worried about their situation, there was only so long you could keep up a state of anxiety in what was basically fairly comfortable circumstances. Everyone was settling into their captivity, adjusting to their circumstances and trying to push the future aside for now. It was a coping mechanism. Cassandra had noticed it, according to Al, and Aneka doubted it had slipped past Ella; she just did not want to break the spell by saying it was happening.
Various groups of explorers had covered pretty much the whole of the arboretum. Aside from the sealed door and the three sensor columns, they had found nothing but plants, all carefully arranged in semi-segregated beds by planet of origin. Something obviously tended them, kept each area from encroaching on the others, and made sure the plants were healthy. If that system of keepers was still operating, no one had seen any sign of it. As far as anyone could tell, they were entirely alone.
‘How’s breakfast looking this morning?’ Aneka asked as she got closer to Gillian and Drake who had taken the early shift on watch.
Gillian smiled at her. ‘Eggs, these little strips of meat…’
‘That would be bacon, more or less.’
‘Bacon then. These small fried tuber discs are going down well…’
‘They’re chopped up potatoes, Gillian.’
‘Really? That’s what potatoes are? Good source of starch and carbohydrates according to the packaging. Bash has decided that he really likes these…’ She poked at three discs of black material that looked like thick, shotgun wadding with her spatula, ‘…sausage-like things.’
Aneka blinked. ‘Black pudding. You, uh, probably don’t want to know what that’s made of, but could you do some for me.’ Somehow it was not surprising that Bashford, who brewed his own beer, liked black pudding, but… Aneka frowned. ‘You know, this is like traditional English breakfast fare. I mean, it’s like they’ve gone out of their way to put food here that I’d recognise.’
‘If they took us,’ Al said, ‘then they took Aggy, and she downloaded your memories to find out what had happened while she was offline.’
‘They had four days to examine your brain,’ Drake said, unconsciously adding to Al’s statement. ‘I’d imagine it would be harder to do ours and Cassandra doesn’t eat so I doubt she has food preferences.’
‘She does not,’ Al confirmed, ‘but she does like some food smells.’
‘Huh,’ Aneka grunted, not sure if she approved or was worried. ‘Well, we’re going to need an exercise regime if we keep eating this stuff. It’s a lot of energy we aren’t using.’
‘Jenlay do not get fat,’ Gillian stated, ‘even if some of them worry about it.’
‘Figures.’
‘However,’ Drake mused, ‘some exercise would probably be a good idea. Aside from anything else, we’ve no routine, nothing to do.’
Gillian nodded as she put three more slices of the sausage into her frying pan. ‘If this keeps up we are going to start getting very bored.’
~~~
Part of the anti-boredom regime was for Cassandra, Ella, and Aneka to take Abraham Wallace to see one of the sensor columns. Wallace was getting more bored than everyone else since he could do even less. His heart was pumping away with less effort, sure, but he was still functioning in about three times the gravity his body was used to. So, Aneka and Cassandra provided support so that he could walk out to the most northerly one.
Well, it started out as helping, but after a hundred metres Aneka gave up and just picked the man up and carried him.
‘You’re too damn tall!’ she told him as he complained about the ignominy. ‘I feel like a walking stick. We can go back to supporting you when we get there.’
The fact that Ella was giggling, and Cassandra appeared to be trying not to, did not help. ‘This is undignified,’ Wallace said.
‘We’re all stark naked in Kew Gardens,’ Aneka replied. ‘That’s undignified too.’
‘But…’
‘No buts. Or, to be precise, there are far too many butts on display to be standing on ceremony. Shut up and be carried or I’ll throw you over my shoulder instead.’ Aneka got the impression that Wallace was used to assertive women; he shut up. Cassandra did not look like the type, but it was a known fact that she provided organisation to the slightly eccentric genius and Aneka would have bet good money that she found it quite easy to persuade him to do as she wished.
‘It is more practical, Doctor,’ Cassandra pointed out, having got full control of her urge to laugh. ‘I don’t understand why they took your exoskeleton really. I don’t believe it could be used for anything that could harm them.’
‘Given Delta’s practical expertise and my knowledge we might have been able to construct something from it which could open the doors you mentioned,’ Wallace mused. ‘Possibly. They may simply have been being cautious.’
‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Aneka said, her tone also musing. ‘I mean, these people sucked us across… well, who knows how far we moved through that wormhole. Point is, they can generate fucking wormholes! What possible threat are we to them?’
‘None I can imagine,’ Ella replied. ‘I mean, even if you had your blaster that’s one Xinti weapon against… a lot of them I’d assume.’
‘None of this makes a great deal of sense,’ Wallace agreed, ‘but I doubt we’ll get any answers unless they make contact and now we’re here.’
Aneka put the man down and he leaned on Cassandra to examine the column, fingers running over the screen with its scrolling text. There was, in truth, not that much to see.
‘What is this saying?’ he asked. ‘I think I’d be unable to read it even if I could read Xinti.’
‘Atmospheric constituents,’ Aneka replied. ‘About twenty per cent oxygen, seventy-eight nitrogen, one of argon, two of water vapour, then we’re into the minor stuff like carbon dioxide. Pollen counts from about twenty different species. No one gets hay fever, do they?’
‘I’m going to say “no,”’ Wallace replied, ‘because I don’t know what that is.’
‘An allergy to plant pollens. I guess the improved immune system has other advantages than just disease resistance. Uh, it registered your touch on the screen. There’s data on the current spread of light frequencies…’
‘Is it emitting any radiation?’
‘Not that I can see or otherwise detect.’
‘Purely passive sensors then. Three of them seems a little light. I wonder if there are satellite units, smaller ones we haven’t seen.’
‘If there are,’ Cassandra commented, ‘they are well hidden.’
‘And wired,’ Aneka added. ‘I’d have detected a wireless network.’
Wallace moved around the column, slowly, examining the surface carefully. ‘Seamless,’ he commented. ‘The panels are fitted perfectly into the support columns. If there is maintenance access, it’s through the top.’
Aneka slid a finger over the glass and then the support column nearest her. ‘Well, it’s too smooth to climb.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting anyone try. I doubt annoying our mysterious captors would be wise.’ He looked upwards at the spreading limbs of the metal and glass ‘tree.’ ‘It’s rather elegant. The way it mimics the trees which surround it in a stylised manner. The designer had a sense that the function should not mar the beauty of the environment.’
‘I thought the Xinti were more about function than form.’
‘They were,’ Ella replied. ‘All the artefacts we’ve ever found have been very functional, though not without a degree of elegance. Bessie, your blaster? That’s a good example of their kind of design. Solid, built for a purpose.’
‘Yeah,’ Aneka agreed, ‘for blowing things apart.’
Ella shrugged. ‘It’s a weapon. The Agroa Gar though, that’s a science vessel and they could have armed it, but instead it has some sort of stealth system. Hide rather than fight.’
‘A valid point,’ Wallace agreed, ‘and a strategy they seem to be employing extens
ively now.’
Aneka nodded. ‘I wish they’d show themselves and tell us what the Hell they’re planning on doing with us?’
‘Be careful what you wish for, my dear Aneka. Occasionally you get it and wish you had not.’
Aneka laughed. ‘I always figured that was why you always got three wishes in fairy tales. Two to screw up and one to take the first two back.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Cassandra put in, ‘in real life wishes tend to come alone.’
~~~
The weird thing about the arboretum, as far as Aneka was concerned, was the silence. Once everyone was asleep and she was left alone, her eyes scanning in every frequency they could and her hypersensitive ears listening for any sound, there was only the occasional sleep sound from the tents. No animal sounds, no wind, nothing. She had been in many forests and a couple of jungles, and there was always sound at night. Here the silence was almost oppressive.
So the barely audible, high-frequency noise from something moving through the trees was quite obvious. Localising it was far harder and when she did manage to determine the direction it was coming from and a rough guess of the range, she could see absolutely nothing.
There was something there, she was sure of that. Something was in the air, about five metres off the ground and just inside the clearing to the south-east. She thought she once noticed a slight fringe effect as it moved, a vague ripple in the background which only showed in the high ultraviolet.
‘I’m detecting radio signals,’ Al said as Aneka tried to follow the object. ‘Burst mode transmissions carrying Xinti protocols. The encryption being used is not one I know.’
‘Someone outside this room is instructing it. A drone robot?’
‘More than a drone, but not an AI. That would be my assessment anyway.’
‘They wanted to see what we were doing?’
‘A logical assumption. Even if the towers have visual sensors, we are entirely concealed in this clearing.’
Aneka frowned. ‘Kind of odd, if you think about it. If this is the only way they can watch us… Why didn’t they put us somewhere they could keep an eye on us?’
‘They clearly have audio surveillance. They sent Doctor Wallace’s medication and the additional provisions. Perhaps they felt that was sufficient originally, but now want visual coverage as well.’
The sound from the surveillance robot receded almost as suddenly as it had arrived and the arboretum returned to a deathly silence. ‘If they did they apparently saw what they wanted.’
‘I admit that the behaviour of our apparently Xinti captors is perplexing. I am starting to believe that we are here because they simply do not know what to do with us. I think we’re in a holding cell as Ella suggested.’
Aneka looked around at the trees, visible only in the infrared and ultraviolet now. ‘I’ve seen far worse prisons.’
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Aneka was having Benny Hill flashbacks. She was really too young to remember the comedian’s heyday, but a group of attractive women running along forest tracks stark naked was causing the terrible chase music they used to use, ‘Yakety Sax’, to play through her head constantly. Another annoying thing was that her now perfect memory had managed to locate the name of the music even though she doubted she had been told it more than once.
She and Cassandra were there to break the tedium; neither of them actually needed the exercise. The Jenlay women were doing it because some exercise was a good thing and because they were bored, and they were taking the run at a leisurely pace, more of a jog really, because no one had a bra. Ella could have managed to go faster, but the others were trying very hard not to bounce too much. That just made the whole Benny Hill thing worse. The men, she guessed, were not going to be doing much better when they went out in the afternoon; running with everything flopping around just had to be uncomfortable.
Aneka laughed suddenly. Cassandra was sufficiently at ease to respond. ‘Something is funny?’
‘Sort of. An observation. You all might find it interesting, considering your academic leanings. When we decided to split these runs up by sex, none of the men complained. In my time, no self-respecting man with an ounce of testosterone would have passed up the opportunity to watch naked women running.’ The round of laughter which resulted from that statement also resulted in them pausing the run. Even at the pace they were going, giggling was not conducive to breath control.
‘The Jenlay have matured that much over your time?’ Cassandra asked while the others caught their breath.
Aneka considered for a second. ‘Yeah. I think it’s a matter of opinion whether Jenlay society’s attitude to sex is better than ours was. I think it’s lost a little of its… mysticism? But I can’t argue that the men now don’t have a better attitude to women. They’re all more secure.’
‘All?’ Delta asked, bemused.
‘Uh-huh. Monkey might be shy around women he likes, but he’s secure about his body and he won’t go out of his way to see a naked woman.’ She grinned. ‘Of course that might be because he spends a lot of his time with women who hardly wear anything anyway.’
‘Familiarity breeds contempt?’ Cassandra suggested.
‘Or at least turns the unusual into the mundane. Shall we circle back?’
‘Please,’ Shannon said, giving her breasts an upward push with both hands. ‘These puppies were never designed for running without support.’ Aneka gave her a grin and set off again in a loop towards the central clearing.
They had gone barely twenty metres when Al spoke. ‘I’m detecting the same burst transmissions I detected last night. It would appear that we are under observation again.’
‘Great. Now I really feel like I’m filming a Benny Hill episode. All we need is a small, bald man to chase.’
‘Are you going to mention it to the others?’
‘Not right now. I’ll tell them when we’re back at the camp.’
~~~
The news that their visitor from the night before was back had everyone looking around for any sign of it. Of course they saw nothing.
‘Ultrasonics put it on the south side of the clearing,’ Aneka told them. ‘I can’t be more specific, and I can’t see the thing so you lot aren’t going to spot it.’
‘It must be using the same sort of camouflage as the robots on Alpha Mensae,’ Monkey said, still looking for any sign of their invisible watcher.
Aneka nodded. ‘That’d be my guess. It doesn’t seem to be dangerous. It just watches. Last night it was around for a minute or two. It seems to be more interested now.’
‘What do we do?’ Delta asked, her voice concerned and nervous.
‘Nothing,’ Gillian replied calmly. ‘Or we carry on as if it were not here. If they want to observe us, we can’t stop them. Unless it proves dangerous we carry on doing what we were doing, which is nothing much of course.’
‘I’m not sure I like being watched,’ Delta countered. She had, unconsciously, covered her chest with her arms.
‘You should be used to it, dear,’ Gillian countered. ‘My son has been doing it since he first laid eyes on you.’
Monkey had the decency to turn scarlet.
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The observation drone had left soon after the group had gone to bed. Specifically after Ella had turned in since she had stayed up late, cuddled against Aneka, chatting quietly about inconsequential nothings. Aneka had been a little disappointed; the sound would have been some company. There was no sign of it the following morning, even when the women went running, and the lunch topic was the odd behaviour of the Xinti they assumed had been directing the device.
‘It all seems rather erratic,’ Gillian commented. ‘They listen, then they watch for half a day or so, then they stop.’
‘Certainly their experimental method leaves something to be desired,’ Wallace agreed.
‘Al thinks they have us in holding,’ Aneka put in. ‘They got us by accident and now they don’t know what to do with us. Ella suggested th
e same when we arrived.’
‘That would fit the facts,’ Gillian replied. ‘You said that Aggy had sent out a distress call. They find the source, reach out and grab it, and discover there are Jenlay aboard, along with a sentient android and the agent they created a thousand years ago. They’ve obviously been hiding all this time…’
‘And yet they revealed themselves fairly spectacularly to rescue one ship.’
‘With little chance that their location would be revealed,’ Wallace countered. ‘We have no technology capable of tracking a wormhole. They revealed their existence…’ He frowned. ‘Probably. Maybe. We determined what was happening using a full science array which was right in the mouth of the wormhole. Normal sensors would just see the station vanish without a trace.’
‘They’ll be saying the Ghost Fleet got us,’ Monkey said.
Wallace grimaced. ‘The Ghost Fleet is a fantasy, though it does raise another point. Wormholes can traverse dimensions. It’s not impossible that we are no longer in our own universe.’
‘If Aggy’s distress call triggered the “rescue,”’ Cassandra said, ‘then that seems unlikely.’
‘True.’ The physicist grinned wolfishly. ‘I’d give my right arm to know how they managed to create that wormhole in the first place, never mind directing it so precisely.’
Aneka turned her head at the sound of the drone’s ultrasonic whine, and saw a metallic globe floating towards them at about head height. There was no attempt at concealment this time; the device was clearly intended to be seen. She was about to say something when whoever was driving the thing spoke first.
‘The loss of a limb will not be required, Doctor Wallace.’ The voice was masculine, soft, confident, and speaking Federal. ‘I am True Congress of the Mind Comes through Understanding, which is something of a clumsy name in your language so you may call me Speaker. If you would please follow this remote. We have completed our… deliberations. I apologise for the length of time you have had to wait, but we are now ready to speak with you and I would like to do so in person.’
‘That…’ Aneka waved a hand at the globe. ‘That’s not you?’
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