The Xenocide Mission

by Ben Jeapes

  ‘– are talking about,’ Boon Round finished. And this time, because they spoke at the same time, Joel knew the other speaker wasn’t Boon Round. He also realized he wasn’t exactly hearing it. A succession of ideas, of images, of concepts would flash through the back of his mind. Some part of him would take them, extract the ideas being conveyed and turn them into speech.

  ‘You . . . you don’t hear anyone else talking?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Flash flash flash . . .

  • (We have) tried and failed (to establish) contact with (the four legged one).

  Joel felt something feeling around in his mind. It went from concept to concept; it matched the ideas with his memory of how to speak; it paired up the ideas with the words, and it turned the whole thing into speech that he could understand.

  • (The four legged one is) Boon Round. (You are) Joel Gilmore.

  Joel slowly pushed himself to his feet, with Boon Round’s support. The unarmed local was just outside the doorway.

  ‘Raise your right hand if you can understand me,’ Joel said.

  ‘Why ever . . .’ Boon Round said, but Joel poked him and pointed at the local, which was raising its right hand to point up at the sky.

  The cold cut into them like knives. It had been cold in the house, but at least it had been out of the wind. The four armed locals draw back slightly but they had their spears at the ready. Contact had been established; trust was yet to follow.

  Joel and Boon Round stood facing the unarmed local, and shivered. The flakes that covered Boon Round’s body tightened up into a windproof covering. Joel reached for his belt and turned his weathersuit heater to max.

  ‘Can you really talk to him?’ Boon Round said.

  ‘It’s not . . . it’s not talking. The knowledge just comes into my head and I know what he’s just said.’

  • (My name is) Meewa. (I am a) Processor.

  The concept of Processor was very clear, though Joel couldn’t see how it could possibly be so. It must be a term from his own memory that was being applied out of context.

  ‘He’s called Meewa and he’s a Processor,’ Joel said. What did it mean? Did Meewa join in the processions? Did he process something? Information? Words? Food? Or did it mean both?

  ‘Is that good?’ Boon Round asked.

  ‘He got us out, didn’t he?’

  ‘Why?’ Boon Round said darkly; Joel had been wondering the same thing.

  • (We need to) know whether (you are) our friends or our enemies.

  Joel thought of their arrival; they had stepped down from the lifeboat and been attacked.

  • (That was a) misunderstanding; (we are) sorry. Once the Processors learnt (of your presence), (we took) steps to remedy the situation.

  ‘Yeah. Right.’ Joel rubbed his head and suddenly he knew Meewa had sensed the pain that stabbed into the depths of his mind. And Meewa knew what was causing it.

  • (I am sorry for) the pain. (It is not) like this (when) (we talk with) the malesna. Our minds (are not) made for full communion. (It took) (a lot of) time and experimentation (to make) contact. (But) (I have to) know – (are you our) friends, and (will you) help us?

  Joel got most of that, except for the malesna. There was only a vague suggestion of meaning attached to the word; rather, there was a great deal of meaning, but only a little that his own mind could comprehend. Something to do with animals, some sort of sacrifice, some sort of feeding or source of sustenance. He put it to one side.

  ‘Help you how, exactly?’

  He glanced at the weapons and suspected what might happen if the answer was ‘no’. And then he remembered that he was talking to a mind reader.

  But he actually sensed amusement. The mind reader understood.

  • (We have been less) hospitable (than we might). (Let us show you) something better.

  ‘This way,’ Joel said, as the Processor led on.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Boon Round said.

  ‘Better hospitality, apparently . . .’

  They entered a building in the corner of the square across from their previous dwelling, next to where the stream of hot water entered a tunnel under the buildings.

  Joel stopped dead at what he saw, and encouraging images in his mind from Meewa confirmed his impression of what it was for. Boon Round bumped into him and protested.

  ‘Tell me,’ Joel said, ‘that this isn’t the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen.’ He was already fumbling for the release tags on his weathersuit.

  In the centre of the room was a square hollow, about three feet deep and ten feet on a side. A small flight of stone steps led down into it and it was full of steaming, hot water.

  Joel wore just his boxers and floated blissfully, arms and legs spread out to hold balance and just his face and toes breaking the surface. Every part of him felt warm. Not the dull, dry heat of his weathersuit’s heater but proper warmth, the glow that comes from within.

  ‘Are you going to take for ever?’ said a familiar voice. Rusties didn’t have the same worship of hot baths that humans did. Boon Round had dunked himself briefly, then climbed back out to shake himself dry.

  ‘And a day,’ Joel said without opening his eyes. ‘You bet.’ He tried to remember the last time he had felt this good. This mellow, this warm, this happy . . .

  Actually, it wasn’t difficult. The last night on Admiralty Island, before setting off for SkySpy. He had stood behind her, her back pressing into his front, his arms clasped around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder and the smell of her hair in his nostrils. And they had watched the sun going down. Billions of tons of flaming gas forced into nuclear fusion by its own gravity, taken from view by the natural rotation of the planet they were standing on, but the most romantic and idyllic moment of his life. The realization that there would never be another sunset quite like it; never again to be watched at that moment and with her, and that it wasn’t often he held a trained killer in his arms.

  Two hours later, he had been on the shuttle that took him to the prideship that took him to SkySpy.

  Oh, no, not again!

  The headache was back, and that meant, so was Meewa the Processor. He touched his feet to the bottom of the pool and crouched, still keeping as much of himself as possible submerged in the delicious warm water. Meewa and escort stood on the edge of the pool.

  • (Is this) of use?

  Joel yelped. ‘Yes!’ Meewa was holding out a packet of antirad pills. Joel leapt out of the bath and grabbed it. Unopened, untampered with. Perfect. He tore it open and tipped out two orange pills (First Breed) and two blue (human). He and Boon Round gulped them down. Joel knew the instant feeling of health and vitality as the smart drugs went to work on his radiation-damaged cells was pure illusion, but still a pleasant one.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much. How did you know?’

  • (I saw them) in your mind. (You wanted them) badly.

  ‘Damn right!’

  • (We need to) explain (our) situation (more fully). Come (with us). (I am) authorized (to) show (you).

  Joel glanced at his discarded weathersuit. The thought of getting back into it was not pleasant, but he had declined the offer to have it washed. Its proper maintenance would be beyond these people.

  ‘I’ll be right with you,’ he said. ‘Ah . . . got a towel?’

  They were led outside again, into the cutting, cold wind, but this time it met the warm inner radiance left over from his bath, and it wasn’t half as bad as it could have been. Still, Joel and Boon Round put their heads down and trotted at speed behind Meewa.

  They went out of the plaza through a dim tunnel in the wall, which had dark doorways opening off it, and then into another plaza. The pattern of tunnel and plaza was repeated twice more – each plaza was a variation on the same theme. The whole city seemed to be built like this, almost like a series of interconnected modules. In its glory days it must have looked spectacular.

  Halfway dow
n the fourth tunnel, they took a right and went into one of the doorways. Out of the wind they could slow down, and their way along the worn stone passage was lit by lamps. They passed locals who looked at them, perhaps with curiosity or hostility, but who stayed back.

  Then it was up a narrow, curving stairway in single file. The Processor took the lead, followed by Joel, Boon Round and the guards.

  Occasional windows in the wall let in the Dead World’s cold light and bitter wind, and Joel saw that they were climbing up inside a tower. He even began to pant a bit with the climb and he quickly turned down his weathersuit heater. The last thing he wanted was to produce a sweat which could evaporate from his skin in that cold breeze.

  As they passed one window Joel turned his face away to avoid the blast – and stopped dead in his tracks when something caught his eye. He looked. He stared. He got a prod in the back, and reluctantly started walking up again.

  They came out into the tower’s top room – a circular chamber of dark stone with a high, domed ceiling and tall, wide windows that gave no protection at all from Dead World weather. Joel tried hard to keep his sense of direction, work out in which direction he had been looking on the stairs. Before anyone could stop him he ran over to the window in what he thought was the right direction . . .

  ‘Yes! The lifeboat!’

  Boon Round appeared at his side. The lifeboat sat serenely where they had left it. From up here they could see the grid pattern of the city, the endless series of plazas. The tower grew out of the corner of a square and, two squares diagonally along, was the lifeboat.

  ‘North-west,’ Boon Round said.

  ‘Sure, you’ve got a compass?’

  ‘We landed with the nose pointing due east. If that direction is east then it is to our north-west. We approached this tower from the south. We now know where the lifeboat is.’

  Before Joel could think of a face-saving answer to the elementary display of compass reading – pain.

  • Please.

  Meewa took his elbow and turned him gently away from the window. Joel reluctantly looked around him, as was obviously expected. His attention was caught by the tables around the edges of the room and he wondered if it was a children’s nursery. Hundreds, thousands of bright stones in strange patterns. Weird clay models of amazing intricacy, dark grey slates covered with scribbles which he suspected were writing; maybe not a nursery after all. An avant garde art museum?

  • Once, (a place for) watching the stars.

  Joel hadn’t even noticed the return of the headache, but now he got a quick flash of locals standing at the tall windows, looking out at a clear, starry sky. Other locals played with the stones and the clay. Making notes? Models of constellations? Calculations?

  Then he looked up at the domed roof of the chamber. He didn’t understand everything up there – a lot of writing, curves, lines – but he recognized the basic idea. It was stars. He presumed it was the Dead World’s night sky, from a time when you could actually see the sky at night. And there were a lot of stars up there – more than he would have expected, from what he remembered of the view from SkySpy.

  ‘Boon Round,’ he said, ‘this place is an observatory! These people . . . these people really were advanced. Just as much as Earth or the Roving, a few centuries back . . .’

  ‘So I had deduced,’ Boon Round said, ‘from this.’

  The Rustie had wandered forward into the centre of the room. Set into a pit was a circular wooden board, perhaps ten feet across. There was a golden ball at the centre and painted, golden rays blazed out of it. Joel suddenly had no doubt that this was a model of the solar system. It might even have been clockwork. Three planets orbited the central sun – small wooden balls that moved along elliptical tracks. Presumably, they were the uninhabitable first world, then the home world of the XCs, and finally the Dead World.

  ‘Odd they didn’t know about the outer planets,’ Joel said. ‘You’d have thought they’d put in the Shield at least. It should have been visible from here.’

  ‘Perhaps they aren’t interested in what lies beyond this world,’ Boon Round said. ‘Only what’s between here and the sun.’

  ‘They don’t have either of the homeworld’s moons,’ Joel observed.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t have telescopes. This is naked-eye observation only.’

  The headache . . .

  • (I must) cause (you more) pain. (The explanation is) nearly complete.

  Joel gritted his teeth. ‘Go on.’

  • (This is how our) worlds (are) now.

  Meewa opened a flap in the floor and turned a small wheel. The model began to move; the XCs’ world and the Dead World crept around their tracks until they were as close together as they would ever be. Both worlds had to make several orbits of the sun to get there; their years were of quite different lengths and the XCs’ world lapped the Dead World several times before the two made the right conjunction.

  • And this is the . . .

  Another of Meewa’s information dumps, straight into Joel’s head. He saw more than just the two planets at perigee. He saw . . . it was like a feast day, a celebration, a religious event; every festival of every one of Earth’s religions rolled into one, plus Winter Solstice, New Year, Carnival.

  On the level above this room, on the roof of the tower itself, the Processors gathered. It was a scene repeated all across the world, at the tops of mountains and towers like this. Their necks craned upwards, their gaze was fixed on the blue star gleaming bright in the dark. And they were taking something from the sky.

  • (At these) times (we would) reach out (to the) . . .

  [That sacrificial animals idea. The malesna.]

  • . . . (and we would be given) life.

  The pain, the pressure was building up inside Joel’s head, worse than ever before. More pictures, more images . . .

  ‘Stop it!’ he screamed. His hands were clasped around his head, trying to hold it together, to stop it bursting. He was on his knees and Boon Round was holding him up.

  The pain stopped abruptly. Joel breathed a sigh of relief that spread throughout his body, better even than the warmth from the bath.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ Boon Round said. Joel felt the trickle from his nose, put a finger to it, saw the blood on his finger tips. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Hard . . . hard to say.’ Joel pushed himself to his feet and leaned on the rail that surrounded the model. He tilted his head back and pinched his nose. Meewa was turning the wheel again and the planets were returning to their previous positions. ‘Something about . . . something really important happens when the planets are close. They get . . .’ Joel curled his fists up tight, frowned, tried to squeeze the concept out of his brain. ‘Guidance. Information. Stu f. They get it from the sky.’

  ‘Astrology?’ Boon Round sounded scornful.

  ‘No, not astrology! It’s more important than that. I . . . I need to think about it, get it straight . . .’

  But Joel couldn’t quite picture it. These malesna were involved, somehow. And the XCs’ Homeworld.

  • (We need) malesna. (We have) some (but not) enough. (After) you, (some more) (came from) the sky (but they were) lost (to us). (Can you) (help us get) more malesna?’

  The question took Joel by surprise.

  ‘Um . . . how?’ he said.

  • In this.

  A clear image of the lifeboat.

  ‘Um . . .’ he said again. The doubts were back in his mind, and again he knew that the Processor knew them. Joel knew exactly what the Admiralty would say if it learnt he was hiring the lifeboat out to a non-technological species for their errands. Maybe an arrangement could be made, but it was something that could only be done at the level of admirals and politicians. Or his father. Not a mere lieutenant.

  On the other hand, he and Boon Round between them were the ranking Commonwealth officers and sole government representatives on this planet.

  But again, Meewa seemed to understand the hesitation.
>
  • (Please consider) the request, (and) (in the meantime) (let me show) you more.

  ‘Does it still hurt?’ Boon Round said as they followed the Processor.

  ‘Yeah.’ Joel rubbed his temple. ‘I think he’s keeping what he says short, though. He knows it hurts. He’s guessed humans aren’t built for telepathy.’

  ‘I haven’t received any pictures at all.’

  ‘No, that would be . . .’ Joel bit his tongue and stopped. Now really wasn’t the time to start antagonizing his companion again.

  ‘Do go on.’

  Joel sighed. ‘No offence, but the Ones Who Command designed you not to have any imagination or initiative. And maybe that means no telepathy either.’

  ‘There’s no offence. That’s how it is. And it’s a reasonable hypothesis.’

  ‘Well, believe me, you’re damned lucky.’

  ‘Incidentally . . .’ Boon Round took a step closer, as if passing on a confidence. ‘Your aide is in this tower somewhere.’

  ‘What?’ Joel stared at the Rustie. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just heard its contact tone in my translator unit. It is definitely nearby; probably on an adjacent floor. Its signal is strong. Shall I contact the lifeboat through it?’

  ‘God.’ Joel glanced out of the window. ‘You could, couldn’t you?’

  • Please come.

  Meewa was watching them. Was he picking up on the exchange? There had been no headache apart from a brief flash with that last message, so maybe not.

  And things were getting interesting. Meewa had made the attempt to communicate; they hadn’t been killed . . . They ought to find out what was happening.

  ‘No,’ Joel said. ‘But file it away for future reference.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And now . . .’ Joel gestured for Boon Round to precede him. ‘Let the lesson continue.’

  ‘Learned Mother.’ Fleet lay on the stone floor of the cell, his back propped up against the wall. He sounded, and was, weak. Worn out. Oomoing wondered if she caught a note of despair.

  ‘Loyal Son?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  Unwise, Loyal Son, Oomoing thought. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘My Mother raised me to serve the battle gods unswervingly.’