by S MacDonald
She provided him with wrist-jets then, evidently having come prepared. What she hadn’t brought was any kind of diving outfit, as she’d told Alex frankly that the kind of wetsuits humans wore were as daft, to her eyes, as people attempting to swim in a rubber tuxedo. She was wearing shorts and a vest top, herself, and evidently felt that Alex’s own shorts and t-shirt would be fine to go swimming in. Alex felt so too, and waded out waist deep as he was strapping on the wrist jets. A moment to ensure that his swim-mask was on securely, and he gave her a grin. Ready.
They dived together and cruised out, Alex towed along by his wrist jets and Silvie kicking easily. Above them, the surface of the water glittered as if scattered with diamond fragments. Below, a long slope of pillow lava gave way to an even longer, deeper zone of black sand, almost devoid of life. It was several minutes before they came to a reef; not the long shallow reefs Alex had seen on other worlds, but a reef of a kind typical on Carrearranis. It was a tower reef, looming up out of the gloom and still some metres short of the surface. These were havens of sea-life on Carrearranis, and favoured spots for fishing. It was easy to see why; the tower was aswarm with seaweed, some of it drifting around, metres long. Shellfish clung wherever they could find purchase or crawled about amongst the fronds, while bright fish darted everywhere.
‘Beautiful,’ said Alex, taking in all the colours and movement and busy life of it all.
‘Hmmn,’ said Silvie, and flicked him a grin as he looked surprised. ‘Yes, it’s very pretty,’ she said. ‘But frankly, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Twenty three kinds of seaweed, eighteen species of fish… hardly the richest biosphere I’ve ever encountered.’
Alex knew that the biosphere on Carrearranis was extremely restricted by normal planetary standards. There was a small range of trees, shrubs and plants common to all of the islands, some insects, no birds. It was clearly a terraformed environment – the Olaret had created just what the people here would need, from cotton plants for clothing to year-round sources of food. And in the ten thousand years since they’d colonised this world, no great evolutionary diversity had developed. Even so, he was surprised by Silvie’s statement that there were only eighteen species of fish, as he felt sure the research team had listed more than a hundred.
‘Eighteen?’ he queried. The swim mask covered the whole of his face in much the same way as the helmet of a survival suit, and it felt just as natural to him, breathing and talking just as normal. Silvie, aware that humans struggled to hear anything clearly underwater, had popped in an ear-com so that they could talk as they swam.
‘Eighteen species,’ Silvie clarified. ‘There are sub-species which your people have given different names to, but the differences are tiny – see, there, that’s a long-finned malla and that one over there is a thin tailed one. Give you a dollar if you can spot the difference.’
Alex laughed. ‘I can barely tell a shark from a dolphin,’ he reminded her. ‘But I take it that they’re not esper-responsive, then?’
He could see that they weren’t. On Telathor, Silvie had danced with shoals of fish, laughing delightedly as they swirled in elaborate patterns around her. That wasn’t something they did naturally, she was just playing with them. Here, though, the fish were paying no attention to either of them, not even to dart away in alarm. In this ocean, they were the apex species. The biggest of them was about twelve centimetres long, and though a predator, ate nothing but shellfish and spry.
‘Pvvvv!’ Silvie said. ‘The Carrearranians are right, fish here are stupid. They’ve got the IQ and emotional awareness of a daffodil. You can’t play with them, they won’t interact with you on any level. And everywhere you go…’ she gestured broadly, ‘is exactly the same. All around the inhabited zone – sand, reefs, same fish, same weeds. And the deep oceans are incredible – normally, you know, deep ocean vents are hotspots for the most amazing creatures, and cold arctic waters are teeming with all kinds of life, but not here. Deep oceans and arctic waters are a desert.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s almost like the Olaret didn’t finish it,’ she said. ‘Like, they laid down the basics essential for the colonists, but they didn’t take it out to the kind of rich biosphere we know they normally did. It just feels, I dunno, a bit like a rush job to me.’
Alex felt a chill touch him which had nothing to do with the cooler water at this depth. He could think of a reason why the Olaret had left this biosphere at its most basic level of terraforming, and for that matter why they’d left the Guardian in place when none of their other colonies had such a thing in their known history. The Olaret themselves had been wiped out in the plague. Was it possible that this world was the last of the survival colonies they had been founding as their legacy? And that it had not been finished when…
‘Brrr!’ he shook himself and forced a laugh as Silvie gave him a startled look, sensing the brush of horror which had shivered through him. ‘Just a touch of heeby-jeebies,’ he admitted, and grinned. ‘Come on – I want to swim.’
They both enjoyed that. Alex was as agile in freefall as any spacer, and diving with wrist-jets was close enough to that for him to feel perfectly at home. It was fun to go fast, streaking through the water in the stream of bubbles that the jets produced. It was fun, too, chasing Silvie – they were not playing tag, as such, since Silvie could have caught him within seconds, but she enjoyed the game of letting him chase her. Alex had a lovely vibe to be around when he was like this – relaxed, happy, focussed on the challenge of twisting and darting about to keep up with her, and taking pleasure in his own agility, too, just having a really good time.
In fact, he was having such a good time that when Silvie went up fast towards the glittering surface, Alex aimed his jets without thinking and went powering up straight after her.
He realised in the last two metres what she was doing, and what he was doing, but it was far too late by then.
Silvie came out of the water like a flying fish, rising clear of the waves and flicking over to dive back in with a perfect, graceful arc. And Alex…
Alex came out of the water with his aqua jets going at full speed, was yanked out a metre high before the jets cut out, and splatted back down at the surface with all the grace of a falling brick… except that bricks did not generally yell ‘arrrrgh!’ and flail their arms about as they came crashing down.
Alex, half stunned, winded and checking to make sure that he still had all his limbs, was aware that Silvie had swum back to join him.
‘Alex,’ she scolded, ‘be careful!’
Once he’d managed to get his breath back and stop laughing, they rested for a while, floating on the surface and enjoying the warmth of the sun. Neither of them said anything for a while, just happy in the moment. Or at least, Alex would have said he was happy. Silvie knew better.
‘It’s no good,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re still sad.’ She rolled over onto her front, looking into his eyes with a deep, searching look. ‘It’s like… a grief,’ she said. ‘What is it, Alex?’
He didn’t insult her by telling her that it was nothing she needed to concern herself with. He was, as always with her, entirely open and honest.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I think, probably, just, you know, shoreleave blues. Hate shoreleave.’
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But this isn’t just bored and frustrated, you’re sad … deep down, really sad.’
When she said it, Alex knew she was right. And when he thought about it, he could pinpoint the moment at which that quiet sorrow had welled into his heart, and had lain heavy there ever since. He could see himself standing at the window in the Embassy, looking out at the world and knowing how much it was going to change.
‘Well, maybe it’s sad because it’s over,’ he said. ‘For me, anyway. We’ll be leaving soon and even if we do get to come back it will be on a courtesy visit and, well, everything will have changed by then.’
‘You don’t want it to?’ Silvie was a little bewildered, given how hard Al
ex and the others had worked to get to the point where they could help the Carrearranians, and no question in that of leaving them to live without basic amenities.
‘Oh – yes, of course,’ Alex said. ‘I know that change is for their benefit and it is what they want, too, which is paramount. I wouldn’t want to hold them back, of course I wouldn’t. I know that I’ve done the best for them that I could, too.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘Perhaps I just don’t like how little that was – it’s certainly made me appreciate how sensitive other people get when we sweep in with our hot tech and sort problems out that they can’t. You know, the old, ‘Move over, boys, the professionals have arrived.’ A little disheartening to be on the receiving end of that.’
‘Has Tan said that?’ Silvie was surprised, since she knew very well the immense respect that Tan Ganhauser had for Alex.
‘He doesn’t need to,’ Alex said. ‘I know it. Come on, we did what we could with what we had, but Tan and the Embassy II, they are the professionals. I don’t envy them, frankly, the job they’re taking on is way outside my league. It’s just that I’ve spent the last six months so totally invested in this planet, I feel at a bit of a loss now that it’s ‘thanks, Alex, bye.’’
Silvie considered this. ‘Don’t you want to go home?’
Alex smiled. The honest answer to that one was no, not really. His home was the Heron, and it didn’t really matter all that much to him where they were based. He was most at home, in fact, when the Heron was out in deep space. He was only too aware, too, that ‘going home’ in this instance meant facing first the barrage at Oreol, then Telathor, then Therik itself. Of course his crew wanted to go home, especially if they had families there, but for Alex himself he’d be perfectly happy to get orders which took him straight from Carrearranis somewhere far, far away from the media with something really interesting and challenging to do.
‘Not for myself,’ he said, ‘though for the crew, of course, and the ship needs some work done.’
‘Hmmn,’ said Silvie. ‘And then?’ She looked at him searchingly again. ‘I’ve heard,’ she suggested, ‘that your next assignment might be looking for Defrica.’
Alex gave a crack of laughter. ‘That’s a joke,’ he assured her. ‘I know, most spacers do believe that it’s real – I do myself. Van Damek was no crazy guy, he was the best explorer we have ever had. I believe there is sufficient evidence to make it credible that he found an inhabited world within the Altarb Ranges – nothing like the myth of the ‘Lost World’ legends or movies or anything like it, but a world like this, perhaps, pre-industrial, a world that he believed to be so precious that he lied about its location to protect it.’
Silvie raised thin, platinum eyebrows. ‘You approve of that?’
‘Hmmn,’ Alex admitted. ‘Dunno. I think, given the situation back then – and it was a couple of hundred years ago, remember, the political scene was very different then and Mimos was still an ongoing disaster – I think he made an ethical choice based on the knowledge that if he had revealed its location, that world would have been splatted with very heavy handed and potentially devastating development. I don’t know if it’s the call I would have made, but I respect the fact that he took on that responsibility. Different for me, here, obviously, I’m an official representative of our government so there was never any question of me keeping any discovery from them, and I can act in that capacity with a clear conscience, too, knowing that development will be sensitive and beneficial. But as for us going looking for Defrica…’ he chuckled at the thought, sculling gently on his back in the warm water and turning his head to grin at her. ‘The Altarb Ranges,’ he pointed out, ‘are orders of magnitude bigger and more turbulent than the little patch of rough space we’ve been navigating here. And we had all the benefit of knowing exactly where three systems were with indicators of life visible through long range observation. There’s nothing like that in the Altarb Ranges, it’s such a mess of nebula and distorted space that you can’t even get clear readings on stars, let alone determine what planets they might have. We could spend the next hundred years searching, with no idea where to even start looking.’
‘Van Damek got there, though,’ Silvie observed, quite surprised by his certainty that the thing was impossible.
‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘and that’s the thinking which has got lord knows how many expeditions heading off to whatever they consider some likely spot, and to date, at least thirty eight of them have vanished without trace. Anyway, I’ve been told by the Admiralty that that one is not on our radar. I believe, in fact, that the next one on our list is Dortmell.’
He spoke without enthusiasm, and Silvie rolled over again to look at him in some alarm.
‘Isn’t it dangerous there?’
‘Very,’ said Alex. Dortmell was notorious as the drugs capital of the League, with little effective government and corruption and intimidation very much the norm. The planet was effectively ruled by drug lords, getting filthy rich on shipping their deadly cargoes out to other worlds. Alex von Strada and the Fourth were very much on their radar, since he’d put a stop to them using ISiS Karadon as a drugs transit depot and led a law enforcement operation which had seriously inconvenienced one of their most powerful barons. Customs and Excise and the Diplomatic Corps had been pressing ever since for the Fourth to be sent to Dortmell itself as soon as higher priority exodiplomacy missions allowed. ‘It’s another operation like the one at Sixships,’ Alex explained. ‘Customs and the Diplomatic Corps want us to go in there and tackle the shipping side of things – make some seizures, take the ships back to Dortmell and blow them up in system space. Which is not,’ he added, ‘the way that the Fleet normally conducts law enforcement. We are, you know, to throw our weight around and generally be as scary as we can.’
Silvie looked sidelong at him, floating there in the tropical t-shirt and shorts Buzz had inflicted on him in the hope that it would get him in the holiday mood. She giggled.
‘Yes, well, I know,’ Alex conceded, with a grin. ‘But we might as well make use of my reputation as a ruthless psychopath, huh. I’m afraid it won’t be much fun for you, though… no swimming, no going groundside at all, not for you or any of us. Far too dangerous.’
‘Hmmn.’ Silvie said again, and flipped over onto her own back, gazing dreamily into the sky. The ocean was very still. It was like floating in a lukewarm, salty bath. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that it’s time for me to go home… to Quarus.’
Alex was conscious of a pang of loss… desolation, almost.
‘Of course…’ he went to say, telling himself firmly not to be so selfish, or so idiotic. Silvie had only come to the Fourth on a visit – brought to them, indeed, by Davie when he was at his wits end. It had always been understood that she would leave whenever she liked, the Stepeasy on standby, always, to take her anywhere she wanted to go. And of course she would want to go home. She was only fifteen and she was a very long way from home. And however caring they were, however much they loved her, they were not her people.
‘Ow!’ Silvie exclaimed, and rolled over quickly, putting her hand onto Alex’s chest as if trying to ease the stab of pain. ‘Sorry!’ she said. ‘I was just teasing!’
‘Oh.’ Alex felt the relief rushing through him, and gave an uncertain laugh. He wasn’t at all sure that she had been teasing – her desire to go home had felt very deep and very serious to him. It worried him that she might change her mind because she didn’t want to hurt him. ‘But perhaps,’ he ventured, ‘you should go home… it would certainly be better for you than going to Dortmell.’
‘I have no intention of going to Dortmell,’ Silvie agreed. ‘And I don’t want you going there either – I know, I know, duty and all that, but I really think they ought to be able to solve their problems without calling you in just to act like a psychopath.’ She was sternly disapproving with that, and Alex, who secretly agreed with her, could only grin. ‘And I do want to go home,’ Silvie said. ‘I think I should – I’ve learned enough now t
o be able, I think, to help my people understand what’s going on with yours. At least some of what’s going on with yours,’ she amended, acknowledging the enormity of this challenge. ‘But I have no intention of even attempting to do that with the utter nanas that the Diplomatic Corps sends out. I’m going to ask for our own choice of Ambassador. Marc Tyborne told me I could do that, and he won’t refuse because the relationship with Quarus is so important – way more important than sending you to Dortmell pretending to be a psychopath.’
Alex rolled over, treading water, staring at her. ‘Me?’
‘Well of course you,’ Silvie sounded a little impatient. ‘Who else? But I will expect you to bring me back with you, mind.’ She poked him on the shoulder, bossily. ‘You,’ she told him, ‘are stuck with me. Okay?’
Alex looked back at her, and understood without the need for words. She had learned too much, changed too much, to settle back into quarian society and be content. She would be always an outsider there, the odd one. With Alex, with the Fourth, she could just be herself. And she needed to know that she would have a place there with them for as long as she wanted it.
‘Tuh!’ Alex shook his head and sighed, though he could hardly keep the grin off his face. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to put up with you…’
‘Pig,’ said Silvie, grinning back, and with that gave a lazy backward somersault and vanished under the rippling water. ‘Come on – swim!’
Alex swam, and as he plunged down to the shadowy levels which were as deep as he could go without a pressure suit, he felt as if the whole world lay before him, the future opening up with all the challenge, thrill and wonder of awaiting adventure. It had been that, really, the feeling that the foreseeable future held nothing but aggravation and harassment, which had been making him regret that the joy of this mission was over. And Silvie, seeing that blaze of purpose in him that lit him up like a beacon, chuckled.
‘Now you’re happy.’