by Allen Steele
Alive, he thought. She was about to say, “Glad to hear that you’re still alive.”
“Jason tells me that you’ve crashed,” she said instead. “Where are you, do you know?”
“Somewhere on Hex,” Sean replied, as if this explained everything. Or maybe I should say “in Hex.” Whatever. “We came in through the roof of the biopod we were investigating and landed in a field not far from its eastern end. I told your first officer the rest . . . He’s probably filled you in already. Anyway, we lost our pilot when we crashed, and shortly after that our team leader was killed.”
“By an inhabitant, yes.” Andromeda’s voice was scratchy, and Sean adjusted the gain on the transceiver slung beneath his arm. “Are you in any immediate danger? From them, I mean.”
Sean looked around. The arsashi stood nearby, with one of the males silently watching the female leader as she conversed with Kyra. He didn’t like the way they towered above her, but they didn’t appear to be hostile. The other male had returned to their sledge; the sunlight was reflecting off the cab windows, so Sean couldn’t tell what he was doing.
“I don’t think so,” Sean said. “It was a . . . a misunderstanding. I think they know that now. Kyra didn’t have a chance to tell Sandy that it’s unwise to clap your hands around arsashi, because in their culture it’s a signal to attack. And since Cayce had his hand on his gun . . . well, one thing led to another.”
“I understand.”
Yeah, I bet you do. “Your first officer told me you’re docked in a hex some distance from here . . . where we are, I mean. Any chance you can pick us up?”
“Sean, I’m just like you. I haven’t a clue where we are.” A short pause. “No, that’s not quite true. There appears to be some sort of maglev system that runs from one hexagon to another. I’m standing on the tram platform of the hexagon . . . or habitat, as the danui call it . . . where we’ve docked, and it appears to be marked by a set of coordinates. They look like geometric shapes . . . dots, squares, triangles, diamonds, and so on . . . but Tom D’Anguilo thinks they’re danui numbers. If you can reach the tram system in your habitat, and figure out how to plug in these coordinates, maybe you can get here.”
“Maybe.” Sean’s fist tightened around his hand mike. “So I take it the answer’s no.”
This time, his mother’s response was not immediate. Sean looked over his shoulder. Mark and Cayce lay upon the snow-covered ground, and Sandy stood above them, staring at their covered bodies. He couldn’t see her expression through her airmask, but Sean had no doubt that she was still blaming herself for Cayce’s death even though both he and Kyra had taken pains to assure her that it had been only an accident.
When his mother spoke again, her tone was noticeably harder than it had been just moments before. “Sean, you’re on your own. I don’t like it any more than you do, but you can’t count on our coming to your rescue . . .”
“What a surprise,” he said dryly.
He knew that she must have known what he meant by that, but she let it pass. “So I’m putting you in charge of your team,” she went on. “Your job is to get them out of there and lead them to where the Montero is docked. That’s your first and only priority. Do you copy?”
Sean stared at the handset as if his mother were about to jump out of it. It never ceased to amaze him just how callous she could be. Pragmatism was one thing, but . . . “Affirmative, Captain,” he said, regretting that she wasn’t there in person so that he could give her a sardonic salute. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes. I want you to keep in touch at all times . . . particularly if you run into any more situations like the one you’re in. I know you’ve got Kyra there to help, but D’Anguilo knows even more than she does. Between the two of them, they should be able to figure out what’s going on.”
Sean knew that she was right. Their predicament would be even worse, if that were possible, if Kyra weren’t with him and Sandy, or if Tom D’Anguilo wasn’t with his mother and her people. “Affirmative. You said something about some coordinates?”
“Yes. Report back as soon as you reach a tram station, so I can describe what I’ve found. It may be the key to understanding how the trams work. And Sean . . . ?” Her tone softened a bit. “Take care of yourself. I want you back, safe and sound.”
Tell that to my father. “Affirmative, Captain,” he replied, deliberately cool in his response. “Survey team over and out.”
He shut off the transceiver and folded the antenna, then walked over to Sandy. She was still staring at the bodies and didn’t notice him until he put a hand on her arm. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “You didn’t . . .”
“I know. ‘It’s not your ‘fault’ . . . Everyone’s said that already. Including them.” She glanced at the arsashi, then raised a hand to her head as if to wipe tears from her eyes. Her fingertips bounced off the goggles, and she mumbled, “Damn, can’t I do anything right?”
“Take it easy.” It wasn’t doing Sandy any good to be there, so Sean led her away from the bodies, over to where Kyra was talking to the two arsashi. Sandy was reluctant to approach them, but she’d have to get over that. The biopod belonged to its inhabitants, and Sean knew that he’d need their help if he and his team were ever going to get out of there.
Kyra turned to him and Sandy as they came closer. “Did you talk to your mother?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. I’ll fill you in later.” Sean cocked his head toward the arsashi, hoping that this wasn’t another common human gesture they’d misinterpret. “Have you learned anything?”
“Quite a bit, actually.” Kyra pointed to the female. “Allow me to introduce you to Lusah Sahsan . . . all one name, incidentally, so don’t use just one or the other. She’s the matriarch of one of the major tribes living here. Their tribes are more like extended families than political groups, so that makes her an important . . . um, woman.”
Lusah Sahsan stared at Sean with unblinking yellow eyes and favored him with a nod that was surprisingly humanlike. “The males are two of her husbands,” Kyra continued. “She hasn’t bothered to tell me their names, but that’s normal.” She dropped her voice a little. “Men are chattels in their society and are regarded as being good for breeding, fighting, and lifting heavy objects, and not much more. Or at least that’s what I was told at the university.”
“Sweet.” A new thought occurred to him. “So when Sandy clapped her hands . . . ?”
“They recognized her as being a female, yes, and assumed that she was in charge. And since the lieutenant was a male and also armed . . .” She hesitated, glancing again at the arsashi. “They reacted the way they normally would,” she finished, reluctant to say anything that might offend Lusah Sahsan.
Apparently the tribal leader understood what Kyra said, because she spoke to her husband in her own language. He raised his right arm, and once again Sean saw the row of slender six-inch quills nestled within the fur between his elbow and his wrist. Evolution had provided arsashi males with a natural weapon; they could hurl these needlelike quills from their bodies with a single flex of their forearms, and since arsashi menfolk practice from childhood, the best of them could hit the smallest of targets at a distance of fifteen paces or more. Killing Amerigo Cayce had been no challenge at all . . .
“She says she’s . . .” Kyra began.
“Aye yam sorree,” Lusah Sahsan said. As before, the low growl of her voice was translated by the hjadd-made disk around her neck into a heavily inflected form of Anglo that Sean could barely understand. “Aye dint meen ta keel yer leeder. Et wuzza meesunnerstanning, an eye howp yew wall forgeev yus.”
“She said . . .”
“I got it, thanks.” Nevertheless, Sean was glad that Kyra had carried on most of the conversation and not he. He looked straight at Lusah Sahsan. “We apologize as well,” he said, speaking slowly and hoping that the translator worked better for her than it did for them. It was hjadd technology, so it probably would. “It was not our intent to tres
pass on your territory, or to cause any damage to your . . . uh, habitat.”
He figured that Kyra had probably said this already, but it couldn’t hurt for him to reiterate the apology. Particularly not if Lusah Sahsan was now aware that human males weren’t drones and could even occasionally be tribal leaders themselves. The arsashi female slowly blinked, then her long tongue spilled out of her mouth again and she gave the same gulping hyuk-hyuk-hyuk laugh they’d heard when she and her husbands had first emerged from their sledge.
“Et es nawt ah prowblem,” she replied, apparently amused by something Sean had just said. “Yew arr straynjurs hare, an yew havnut larned yer way bout or tha roolz ov tha wold.” She paused, then pointed to the sky. “Ass yew see, tanaash-haq heels etselve, ass et always duz.”
Tanaash-haq . . . that must be their name for Hex, Sean thought. But what does she mean by learning the rules, or the bit about this place healing itself?
Again, he looked up at the sky. The upside-down tornado caused by the Reese had disappeared, and even the clouds that had been formed by it had faded away. Only a deep blue expanse remained; beyond the immense ceiling, the hexagons of countless other habitats formed a vast pattern across the sky. He wished he’d had a chance to find a pair of binoculars and have a closer look at what had happened up there; he suspected that something had instantly reacted to repair the gap in the ceiling before too much of its atmosphere could escape.
“Tanaash-haq heals itself, as it always does.” That’s what she said . . . but what did she mean?
“I’ve also spoken with her about finding a way out of here,” Kyra said, “and she’s willing to help us.” A quick smile, then she dropped her voice to a near whisper. “Frankly, I think she’d be only too happy to see us go.”
“I’m sure she would be,” Sean murmured. “We’re probably nothing but trouble.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, her husband . . . her other husband, I mean . . . has returned to their sledge to call for assistance. She told him to request a vehicle that can lift the lander high enough for us to open the cargo hatch and unload the gyro.”
“That would be great.” Sean breathed a sigh of relief. If they could retrieve the gyro, and it wasn’t too damaged to fly, it would save them a long hike to the tram station his mother had instructed him to find. “Thank you,” he said to Lusah Sahsan. “We would appreciate that.”
The tribal leader nodded, then turned to point to the southwest. “Ta leeve hare, yew need ta gow datway, t’ward tha cornah ufda habbydat. Ah twam es dere, atta toppa da ramp.”
“The tram station is located at the top of a ramp?” Sean repeated, making sure that he correctly understood her. Lusah Sahsan nodded again. “How far?”
The arsashi growled something that the translator was apparently unable to interpret; all that came from its grille was a disjointed string of consonants. Apparently it wasn’t programmed to interpret arsashi units of distance as miles. “Um . . . yes, I see,” Sean said, trying to be polite. He looked over at Sandy. “Better start packing up,” he said, pointing to the boxes and the equipment they’d already pulled out. “We’re going to need to put everything aboard the gyro as soon as . . .”
Another growl from Lusah Sahsan. “Noh weponz. Yew may noht tayk yer gunz. Dey muhs bey leff hare.”
“She said . . .” Kyra began.
“I know what she said.” Sean shook his head as he looked at Lusah Sahsan again. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. Why don’t you want us to take our weapons?”
She stared at him with the square pupils of her yellow eyes. “Noh weponz ar’lowd in tanaash-haq,” she said, her scowl becoming even more menacing when she showed him the fangs at the corners of her large mouth. “Dis issa rule dat cahnot bey browken.”
“Whose rule?” Kyra asked. “Yours?”
Lusah Sahsan shook her hairy head. “Noh. Danyew’ee. Noh rayce hare may hahv weponz.” She pointed to the open case in which the fléchette pistols were plainly visible. “Leev dem. Wew’ll depohz ov dem foh yew.”
Sean understood what she meant, but nonetheless he was puzzled. “The danui say that no weapons are allowed here?” he asked. “Why?”
Lusah Sahsan didn’t respond but instead looked away from them and toward the nearby forest, as if seeking answers from the strange, ice-covered trees that grew along the banks of the frozen river. “Yew muhst noht hahv spohken ta danyew’ee,” she said at last, more a statement than a question. “Yew wuhd noh dis ef yew deyud.”
“No,” Kyra admitted, “we haven’t spoken to the danui . . . not directly, at least. The person on our ship who has isn’t with us, and he doesn’t know much more than we do.”
The arsashi leader gave her a sharp look. “Deyud da danyew’ee envaht yew hare?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Buht dey tol yew nuthen bowt tanaash-haq?” Her eyes slowly blinked, as if disbelieving what she’d just heard.
“No, they didn’t,” Sean said. “We were only told that there was a habitable world in this solar system, and that we were free to colonize it.”
For the first time during the conversation, Lusah Sahsan turned to look at her husband. The nameless arsashi male stared back at her as if in amazement. Then they laughed again, their long tongues curling upward from their mouths in undisguised hilarity.
“Glad to see that we’re so amusing,” Sandy muttered. “Maybe we can show them a few card tricks next.”
Kyra shushed her, but Sean was becoming annoyed. The arsashi were beginning to remind him of hillbillies who’d come across city dwellers lost in their neck of the woods: hospitable to a certain point, but also willing to enjoy a laugh at their expense. “Sorry,” he said, unable to keep the edge from his voice, “but it looks like this is their idea of a practical joke, and we’ve fallen for it.”
Although her husband continued to laugh, Lusah Sahsan calmed down. “No jowk,” she said. “Wee laff ’cuz danyew’ee deyud da sayhm ding ta’uz, mannee”—another jumble of consonants—“ago. Et es thar wahy.”
“Did what to you?” Kyra peered at her. “I don’t understand.”
“Yew well . . . en ty’yum.” She raised both her hands, palms spread open and outward. “Sayah noh moh. Yew muhst fohnd truff foh yohsehylves.”
Sean and Kyra glanced at each other. For whatever reason, Lusah Sahsan wasn’t willing to explain everything she knew. But it also appeared as if the arsashi hadn’t been told everything about Hex—or tanaash-haq, as they called it—when they’d come here for the first time. Sean wondered how long ago that had been; again, the translator was unable to interpret the arsashi measurement of time into human terms.
“All right, then,” he said. “I guess we’ll just have to . . .”
“What about Mark and the lieutenant?” Sandy asked. “We need to do something about them.”
Sean nodded. Like it or not, they wouldn’t be able to take the bodies with them. The gyro had limited cargo space, and as much as he hated himself for thinking this, he wasn’t keen on the idea of sharing its tiny cabin with two corpses. He turned to Lusah Sahsan again. “Before we leave, we’d like to bury or cremate our dead.” He hesitated, then added, “This is what we do in our culture. You may have another way of . . .”
“Don’t say that,” Kyra murmured, urgently shaking her head. “The arsashi don’t like to talk about their practices, but we believe that they ritualistically eat their dead.”
Sean felt something cold slither down his back, and Sandy scowled in disgust. But Lusah Sahsan merely regarded him with what seemed to be sympathy. “Wee haf ouh custums, buh we donoh spec yew ta fallah dem.” Her hand swept toward the covered bodies in an almost dismissive gesture. “Et duzzent mattah. Leev dem dere. Tanaash-haq well claym dem ass ets owhn.”
Sean blinked, not quite understanding what the tribal leader had just said. “Just . . . leave them here? Just as they are?”
Lusah Sahsan slowly nodded. “Yesh. Ass dey ah. Tanaash-haq well tayk dem.” She pointed to the bodies
. “Luk . . . see foh yohselvz.”
Sean suddenly found himself hesitant to look beneath the silver emergency blankets. Something that Lusah Sahsan had just said gave him the creeps. But Sandy didn’t share the same reluctance. She walked back to where the bodies lay and bent down to pull back the blanket from Mark’s body . . . and screamed out loud, dropping the blanket as she recoiled in horror.
Sean dashed to her side. Sandy was trembling, and from behind her airmask he heard nauseated gasps. “Easy, easy,” he said, grasping her by the shoulders and turning her away from the uncovered body. “Whatever you do, don’t throw up. You’ll clog up your mask and suffocate.”
Sandy nodded and let Sean hold her in his arms; she was shaking, her eyes tightly shut behind her goggles. Hearing another startled cry, he looked around to see Kyra staring down at Mark.
“Sean, come over here.” Her voice was unsteady. “You need to see this.”
Sean took another moment to make sure that Sandy was all right—she wasn’t, but at least she was no longer on the verge of vomiting—then he left her and walked over to where Kyra stood. He didn’t want to see what the two women had found, but he knew that he had to. When he did, though, he was sorry that he’d made that choice.
When he and Cayce had pulled Mark’s body from the lander, one of the first things they’d done was to remove his skinsuit helmet to make sure that his neck was broken and that he really was dead. They hadn’t put it back on again, but had simply closed his eyes and stretched him upon the ground, placing his hands at his sides and leaving the rest of his skinsuit on. Sean figured that, once they had a chance, he’d find a place to bury his friend and perhaps say a few words over his grave.
Obviously, that wasn’t to be.
Above the skinsuit’s neck ring, Mark’s flesh had taken the appearance and texture of cottage cheese. His hair was almost completely gone, his eyes had shriveled deep within their sockets, and the outline of the rest of his skull was visible beneath skin that had become as white and mottled as the snow upon which it lay.
Sean was glad that he couldn’t smell anything through the mask; otherwise, he had little doubt that the odor of mortification would have overwhelmed him. But when he forced himself to bend down to look closer, he saw that what was going on was more than just decay, as accelerated as it might be.