The last of the doughnuts having been shared out, there were no cakes left, just a few packs of cookies and a single box of candy bars. They still, however, had a fair supply of base nutrients for use in the experimental vat. Simon Penarth, therefore, had attempted to grow some ingredients from which he could bake them morale-boosting treats.
On the morning of day twelve, his attempt at getting the vat to create a batch of flour was revealed, as Alex was asked to go down and have a look at it.
He stood staring at it in undisguised horror. It was a grey bulbous mass still suspended in the nutrient, rather like an enormous brain. Worse, it was swelling in great lumps that made it look as if it was trying to swarm out of the tank.
‘What the…’ Alex looked from it to Simon, who was obviously fascinated by the Thing he had created. ‘It’s moving,’ Alex pointed out.
‘We think,’ said Simon, with a gesture which included himself, Silvie and Shion, ‘that it’s fermenting.’
‘It isn’t alive,’ Silvie assured him. ‘But Simon thinks it might turn into beer.’
Alex looked at Simon, and he sighed.
‘Not even as a scientific…?’ he started, then saw Alex’s expression and grinned. ‘Okay,’ he conceded, and reached for the controls which would destroy the contents of the vat.
All the same, the Blob served some purpose, as it kept the crew entertained for the rest of that day, joking and making up yarns about it. The Adventures of Beery the Blob appeared as cartoons on the notice board and there were jokes about it having escaped from the tank and taken up residence in the between-deck spaces.
Those jokes would, in due course, escape into the spacer community and be variously interpreted by activist groups as evidence that the Fourth was brewing beer aboard their ships or that they were conducting vile illegal genetic research, creating monsters and experimenting on them.
For now, though, all that mattered to Alex was that the Blob had done more for morale even than if the experiment had worked and Simon had managed to produce doughnuts.
He was able to go to bed that night, anyway, feeling that it had been a good day. All they had to do now was hang on – if the Whisker had been able to find the Customs ship at the earliest possible rendezvous point they might turn up in just seven or eight more days with whatever supplies they’d been able to get, and in any case they could look to see ships coming in from Telathor in four more weeks. The Diplomatic Corps would, by now, have a ship standing by at Telathor with a team prepared in the hope that the Fourth would have succeeded or in any case got through so far as Oreol where they were to set up an X-base. The Fleet would also have supplies ready for them, knowing very well how short they would be running by now. So all they had to do was hang on here until their relief arrived.
That would not, of course, be the end of it. Far from it. There would be reports, enquiries, inevitable hassle from the LIA and endless political debate. Alex could only hope that the Fourth would be sent on another mission, and fast, rather than being summoned to Chartsey to face a barrage of questions he had no firm answers to, only guesses and probabilities.
He was in the middle of an uneasy dream, trying to find his way through labyrinthine corridors, when he was jolted awake by the siren whooping for alert stations.
He was out of bed in two seconds, yanking on his jacket as he left his cabin and ran the short distance to the command deck. This was not an action-stations alert, but a call to standby, waking all on-call crew to report to stations at once, and summoning senior officers to the command deck.
He knew as soon as he went through the hatch. Martine Fishe had been holding the watch tonight, and she looked across at him with a beam of such excitement that it hardly needed any words to tell him. And he could see it, too, on the comm screens – an alert, a signal picked up through the nanoweb. And this was not just a glimpse of the alien ship flicking on the edge of scanner range. This was a substantial signal, already decoding into an audio-visual message.
‘It’s them!’ Martine told him, and Alex felt his heart constrict. He gave a short nod as he took his place at the table, feeling his hands shake as he reached for control screens.
This was it. He had a sick dread that this was going to be a message telling them how many deaths and injuries their arrival had caused and begging them never to return. There was even a lurking fear, buried deep, that Harard Perkins might have been right after all and this might be a hostile declaration. Only a tiny part of him was hoping, beyond all hope, that things might have worked out all right, somehow, and this might be the start of something wonderful.
He managed to take a breath and control the trembling of his hands sufficiently to operate the screens which would play the signal aloud as well as displaying analysis of it.
And there it was. An image appeared on the screen, reconstructed after passing through billions of nanoweb nodes all the way out from where they’d left their comms buoy. The figure looked like a human male in his mid-thirties, amber-skinned and with dark almond shaped eyes. He had fine black hair cropped to the length of his earlobes and with a fringe which just touched fine curved eyebrows. He was wearing a colourful shirt of simple design – vee necked and elbow length sleeves in a bright orange fabric much adorned with embroidered flowers. His pants, also of simple design, were a vivid green and also decorated with embroidery of twining vines. A fine, silky-looking sash of hummingbird blue was tied about his waist, and he wore a necklace, a thong on which many beautiful, polished shells were suspended. His sandals looked as if they had been made from similar thongs.
The background behind him would give academics months of data to work on. There were about another eighty people standing there – seventy six, as analysis quickly revealed, from wrinkle-faced elderly to a babe in arms. They were all dressed similarly though none quite as fine as the man who’d taken the front place at the camera, and they were all quiet, watching him. Behind them was a village – a very primitive looking village in which the largest building, directly behind, was apparently some kind of community space, formed of wooden poles supporting a roof of enormous green leaves. Parts of other, smaller but similarly constructed huts were visible, with the smoke from fires drifting through the open sides. Behind that was a landscape of lush tropical growth, a narrow path just visible leading into the jungle. The background audio would also reveal, under analysis, the sound of waves breaking onto sand nearby, the calling of many birds and something which was tentatively identified as some kind of mammal, barking in the distance.
For now, though, all eyes were on the image of the man who’d stepped up to represent his people, as he took a breath and addressed the camera, raising a hand in self-conscious greeting.
‘Er – hello?’
Twenty Five
‘My name is Arak.’ The man lowered his hand and spoke to them with obvious apprehension. ‘I speak for the people of Carrearanis. Um … greetings.’
He was speaking his own language, the matrix they’d created translating it into League Standard with a high degree of confidence.
‘Number one, thank you for going away when we asked. It is unlawful for any stranger to come to our world. The Guardian says you may be diseased. So, er, sorry, but we can’t allow anyone to visit. Number two, thank you for leaving your singing stone.’ He gestured towards whatever camera it was that was recording him, evidently equating that with the ‘singing stone’ the Fourth had left. ‘The Guardian found it and brought your words and images back to us, which has been very interesting to learn about. The Guardian says that we can talk to you through your singing stone and that won’t make us ill so, um, here we are – hello.’
He gestured to the people behind him and there was a mumble of shy hellos and a few nervous little waves.
‘Then, number three.’ Arak turned back to the camera. ‘You asked if we could tell you something about our world and our history. As I said, um, its name is Carrearranis. There is a truth that all our children learn when they ar
e small, and we think that might be interesting for you.’ He adopted a particular stance, his weight thrown onto one foot and one hand raised in the air in a pose which commanded attention. At the same time his tone became declaratory, almost sing-song.
‘This is the truth of the people of Carrearranis. Long ago in the dawn time of the world there was a great and terrible disease which brought worlds to death and disaster. A people called the Olray brought children to our world to keep them safe from the disease. They gave our ancestors the Laws, and all that we needed to have happy lives. They gave us the singing stones which allow the people of all islands to speak together. They gave us, too, the Guardian, which is a creature of living stone. It circles our world, protecting us, and once in every generation it voyages out to see if it is safe yet for our children to return to the stars. It goes towards the world of Tellay, whose people were once our friends, and examines the ships they are sending out into the void. Always the Guardian returns to tell us that those ships are carrying disease, but we hope that one day, in our children’s children’s time, there will be no more disease and the people of Carrearranis can go back to the stars. This is the truth of the people of Carrearranis.’
There were nods of confirmation from many of the people behind as Arak was speaking, and some of them joined in with the final statement, murmuring it in quiet chorus, This is the truth of the people of Carrearranis.’
‘And these are the Laws of the people of Carrearranis,’ Arak continued, ‘given to us by the Olray to be remembered and kept through every generation. The Law One, that our world must be protected from disease and no people allowed to come into the orbit of our star until the Guardian says it to be safe. The Law Two, that the Guardian is never to be revered, that it is a thing made for our service, not a deity. The Law Three, that we shall live in harmony with our world, that we fell no tree, do no harm to the ground, take lightly from the bounties of forest and sea which sustain us. These are the laws of the people of Carrearranis.’
Again, there was a murmured chorus with the final statement, and some of them – all those wearing the silky type of sash, in fact – touched two fingers to their foreheads as if in formal affirmation.
‘So, I hope that is interesting to you.’ Arak reverted to his self-conscious manner, lowering his hand. ‘If you can hear us I suppose you’ll say hello back, and then perhaps we can be friends? Um. So, anyway – hello. And, er – quiet winds.’
He waved goodbye, and with a little chirrup of encouragement from him to the others, the rest of the village gave tentative waves too, as the image froze and faded out.
Alex felt the grin on his face stretch so wide it was making his cheeks ache. Then he laughed as people started cheering – all over the ship, even on the command deck, people were yelling, punching the air and hugging one another. It was a moment of pure delight. Alex accepted a brief hug and pat on the back from Buzz, too, and an exuberant handshake from Davie, who’d come running to the command deck.
‘You did it!’ Davie exclaimed.
‘We did it,’ Alex corrected, and laughed again as he saw Silvie dancing onto the command deck, spinning and giving out whoops of joy. She was, he recognised, being swept away by the massive emotional surge around her. But that was fine, because they all were, really, and if you couldn’t have a crazy five minutes over something like this, when could you?
All the same, he pulled it together as quickly as he could, quietening things down and getting Silvie to come and sit down at the command datatable. An attempt to get her to focus and calm down by offering to take her hand, though, did not work out as well as he had hoped. Silvie was already laughing manically as she took his hand and at that physical contact, actually yelped.
‘You’re fizzing!’ she told Alex, who had to laugh too, letting go of her hand and admitting that he was, indeed, buzzing with energy.
‘But we do need to focus,’ he observed, and with that, was mindful of the fact that the recording of this incident would be studied by the Diplomatic Corps and viewed by Senators, so they couldn’t spend too long celebrating. In the event it was just three minutes later that a now composed Alex called a command team meeting to order.
‘I believe we may take this as confirmation that we have found the lost Olaret Nesting,’ he said. ‘Carrea Rensis, now Carrearranis. And they have, it appears, retained an oral history of their origins through all the millennia, just extraordinary.’
There was a chorus of agreement and a babble of voices which instantly fell quiet again when they realised that they were a babble. Alex gave Shion a nod, seeing that she was eager to speak.
‘I believe that’s probably because of their ongoing relationship with the ship they call the Guardian,’ she said. ‘The ‘singing stones’ they refer to are obviously some kind of comms system which enables them to talk to people all around the world, and that in itself would have a strong effect of people being aware of themselves as part of a global community, and it is apparent that they can talk to the Guardian, too. So if there was any drift, say, towards religious belief starting to arise, the Guardian itself would remind them of their origins and its function.’
‘All the same, it is astonishing that they’ve remembered so much over such a long period of isolation,’ Buzz observed. ‘And they clearly have a sophisticated cosmology in which they are not only aware that there are other inhabited worlds but know that the nearest one is Telathor, or Tellay to them, and they know about starships. But at the same time they are apparently living at a pre-industrial level of subsistence. So where does that put them on the Donavet scale?’
This generated lively debate in which Davie not only derided the Donavet scale as a pathetically inadequate tool with which to evaluate other cultures, but pointed out that they could not rule out the presence of other unknown tech. ‘The Olaret may have given them other technology which may also still be functioning,’ he said.
‘But we didn’t detect anything like powered systems with our scans,’ Buzz pointed out.
‘So?’ said Davie. ‘Our scans didn’t pick up the global comms network either but that obviously operates. All I’m saying is that we can’t jump to any conclusions here.’
‘All right,’ Alex cut in at that, feeling that the debate had gone as far as it usefully could, given the evidence to hand. It would take time, a long time, and a good deal of patient effort before they got anything like answers to all the questions they had. Just for a start, it had taken nearly five weeks for that signal to travel through the nanoweb to them, and would take the same time for their reply to get out to the comms buoy. Communication with Carrearranis was going to be a very slow, painstaking process. But they were communicating, and that was all that mattered. Alex was keeping his manner brisk and professional but as Silvie knew very well, inside his head it was as if a chorus of thousands was singing the Gloriatzi. She was gazing at him, enraptured. ‘The important thing at the moment,’ said Alex, ‘is that we make an evaluation of the advisability of a response. Does anyone feel that there is anything in that message which raises any concern about the advisability of proceeding with contact?’
There was a very definite assurance from all present that they felt quite the opposite.
‘No concerns at all, Captain,’ said Skipper Florez, having raced over to the frigate to join them for the meeting. He was beaming all over his face, utterly thrilled. ‘I think we – you,’ he amended, with a deferential gesture, ‘should respond as soon as possible. But I would suggest…’ his manner became just a shade diffident, ‘given how anxious their spokesman is, clearly not with any experience of high level diplomacy, I would suggest that it would be advisable to respond at an informal level, keeping things simple and, well, friendly.’ He gave Alex an apologetic look. ‘I know that can be difficult for you, when in a formal role,’ he said, and glanced significantly at Davie North.
That, thought Alex, was interesting on many levels, not the least of which was that the Excorps skipper did not atte
mpt to put himself forward for the role but was suggesting, instead, the other officially accredited exo-ambassador on the team. And it was a valid point, too, as Alex recognised – the last thing he wanted to do here was to intimidate the Carrearranians with any cold, formal reply.
Before he could speak, though, Davie himself had chipped in.
‘No,’ he said, reacting to the implied suggestion rather than what the Excorps skipper had actually said. ‘This is the Captain’s call – literally, his decision to make and his right and responsibility to make that call. Just…’ his manner was good humoured but just a shade reproving, ‘have a little faith here, okay?’
Alex held up a hand to assure Skipper Florez that no offence had been taken. He was aware that everyone was looking at him, around the table and throughout the ship. Everyone knew that he became very stiff and official when in public or formal role. But this was different. Right now he wanted more than anything to reach out across space to that anxious man and his people, to greet them as friends and reassure them that everything was going to be fine.
‘Go Alex!’ said Silvie, doing a little cheerleader thing that made everyone laugh again. ‘Ra ra ra!’
Alex looked at her and grinned, feeling that surge of love and protective instinct that felt so natural and right. It did not occur to him that it was at all odd that he’d adopted the quarian ambassador as if she was his child. That was just how it was, with no need to analyse or explain it.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and after a few minutes of discussion on what they should include in their response – what information to give, what questions to ask – he settled to record the message, watched intently by everyone aboard the ship.
‘Hello Arak,’ he said. ‘My name is Alex.’
And he smiled.
FOURTH FLEET IRREGULARS SERIES
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