by Tim Pratt
“I wonder if it is a reference to xylomancy.” Lantern rose up on her walking pseudopods, as if to get a better vantage on the structure. “An ancient form of human divination. Practitioners would throw sticks onto the ground and discern portents from their arrangement.”
“Like using yarrow stalks to interpret the I Ching?” Ashok said.
“No, they didn’t throw the stalks for that, they just sorted them,” Elena said. “It was coins they threw. This stick-tossing business must be some kind of European thing.”
“I wonder what it portends?” Lantern still gazed at the building.
“A lecture on the origins of ultragel, if we’re unlucky,” Stephen muttered.
Ashok grinned. “Did they have aerogel in your time, Elena?”
“Sure we did, though we used it for insulation mostly. We had some on our ship. Light and strong, but not strong enough to make buildings out of, and it had some unhealthy qualities – the particles were a skin irritant, and bad for the lungs.”
Ashok nodded. “Some human engineers got together with some Liars and said, ‘How do we make something like aerogel, but stronger and cheaper?’ They worked together and made ultragel. It’s incredibly light, and strong, and before it sets you can sculpt it into almost any shape. The mineral compounds you need to concoct ultragel occur naturally in quantity on this planet, and the organic compounds are freely available too, since the planet was terraformed. They build a lot of things out of ultragel here.”
“So what’s the drawback?” Elena said. “Why isn’t everything everywhere made out of ultragel?”
Callie had caught up to them. She snorted. “Because if I had a big truck, I could crash into any of these buildings and knock them right over. Using ultragel is like making a house out of pumice or balsa wood. I mean, they won’t break, and they’ll take your weight, but ten people with crowbars could lever one out of the ground and load it onto a flatbed and drive it away. Ultragel can’t stand up to any kind of attack, either. On Earth they’re mostly used as government-provided housing. Ubihuts, we call them.” She frowned. “I’m not sure why.”
“Comes from ‘universal basic income,’” Stephen said. “Ubihuts, ubimeals, ubicars, all that.”
“Oh, right.” Callie glanced at Elena. “On Earth, everybody gets a place to live and a stipend sufficient to buy the basics, but if you want a house that isn’t made of air and dust or whatever, you have to make up the difference yourself with some kind of outside work.”
“We used to dream of instituting those kinds of reforms in my day,” Elena said. “And you couldn’t even remember what they were called!”
“Welcome to our glorious post-scarcity future,” Ashok said.
Callie snorted. “We still have plenty of scarcity. We just moved it around. One breakdown in a supply chain, and people start starving. Though the infrastructure situation is more stable down in gravity wells, I’ll grant you. It helps when you can scoop up water off the ground and pluck food off a branch.”
“I’d love to live in a house shaped like a nautilus shell or a jellyfish,” Elena said. “I don’t care if it can’t stand up to a siege engine. I doubt any of the dorms I lived in would have stood up to a trebuchet either.”
Stephen chuckled. He liked Elena. He had reservations about making her his assistant in medical matters, as Callie had rather blithely proposed, but as a person, he got along with Elena better than almost anyone on the ship. “If the reanimated armies of the Ottoman empire do attack your ultragel house with cannons and it collapses on you, you stand a better chance of surviving than you would if you were in a house made of stone. I was at a scene once, in my first responder days, where a sinkhole opened and collapsed half an ultragel house, and the resident dug himself out of the rubble before we even got started on rescue efforts. We treated him for a scratch on one cheek and sent him on his way.”
“Let’s hope the pizza isn’t made of ultragel.” Callie led the way into a building shaped like a green mushroom with red spots on its cap. The underside of the cap even had individually sculpted white gills. Stephen half-expected it to dump a load of artistic spores on them.
The pizzeria was bustling, a big open space full of long wooden tables with bench seats (most low for humans, a few higher ones for Liars) with employees of the spaceport and visitors mingling together, elbow to elbow. The lights inside were all mushroom-shaped, too, some of them exotically so, and Stephen was amused to see death caps and destroying angels hanging among the various edible varieties. He hoped that didn’t portend poisonous menu options. He doubted the colonists had imported deadly mushrooms to their terraformed world.
A few mechanics rose from a table, and Callie swooped in to claim it. Elena nuzzled up beside her, and the others arrayed themselves as best they could. There were actual menus, printed on paper. Stephen tried to remember the last time he’d seen that. There were, predictably, several mushroom-themed specials, but there were lots of other choices too, and after some friendly wrangling and declarations that certain toppings were absolutely essential or irredeemably disgusting, they settled on an order. (Lantern just wanted a bowl of raw garlic cloves in oil, which was on the menu, and apparently a popular choice among her people.) The server was a cheerful woman with long dark braids woven with sparkling lights, wearing a silver diadem on her forehead, and she took their order without writing anything down.
“What was that on her forehead?” Stephen said. “It looked like a Hypnos headset, almost.”
“Basically,” Ashok said. “Augmented reality gear. I’ve got something similar built into my optics, but mine’s better than that commercial stuff, of course. It probably just gives her a heads-up display, tags objects in the real world with metadata, things like that. She can look at us and see what we ordered hovering over our heads in glowing green letters or whatever. Though she could also be watching armies of meter-high orcs and centaurs have a bloody battle using the tables as terrain, or there could be a projection that erases the walls and makes it look like we’re in the middle of a tropical rainforest – who knows.”
“Nothing’s real any more,” Stephen grumbled.
“This from the man who does massive doses of psychedelic drugs on a monthly basis?” Callie said.
“My sacraments connect me to a greater reality,” he said. “Though now that you mention it, some of the congregants have talked about using augmented reality to enhance the experience – projecting animated mandalas in the air, or exploring tranquil underwater scenes, to ease the comedown.”
Stephen could tell Elena was about to ask him something – he had some hopes that she might join his church, or at least give it a try – but then Callie got a faraway look and said, “Acknowledged.” She focused on the crew again. “Turns out our contact at Almajara was at the spaceport on business this morning anyway, so she’s walking over.” Callie looked around the restaurant, then raised a hand in greeting. “There she is.”
Stephen turned on his bench, and entirely failed at trying not to stare. The woman approaching them was perhaps in the first years of middle age, her skin a deep and lustrous brown, her hair a dark cloud, her face lovely, though troubled. She was short and wide-hipped and walked with confidence and purpose, and she made a simple gray jumpsuit look like the robes of an empress. She stopped at the table, took them in, and then nodded once, briskly, as if deciding they would have to do. “You must be the crew of the White Raven. I’m Q Fortier. You can call me Q.”
I’ll call you anything you want, Stephen thought.
Chapter 13
Callie pointed Q to a short bench at the head of the table, next to her. “Have a seat.” Once the woman was settled, Callie made introductions, then said, “You can give us the rundown while we eat.” The server had just reappeared, carrying trays that smelled divine.
“Cheeeeeeese.” Elena made grabby hands toward the platters.
“You’re welcome to share,” Stephen said to Q. “We have plenty.” He’d edged a little
closer to her on the bench, though Ashok and Lantern were between him and Q. Callie hadn’t seen that look on Stephen’s face before, but she recognized it anyway. She considered whether him making eyes at their corporate liaison would be a complication, and decided it probably wouldn’t. Stephen was so professional he made Callie look like a frivolous dilettante, and even if he developed a crush, she doubted he’d let it affect his duties.
“Thanks, but I already ate.” Q leaned forward, elbows on the table, lacing her fingers together. “On behalf of the Almajara Corporation, I welcome you to Owain. We’re stretched a little thin here, so a team of experienced surveyors like yourselves will be a big help.” She spoke a little louder than necessary, and Callie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was doing the deniability thing, of course. “The specifics of your assignment have been sent to your ship’s system. I’m here to show the corporation’s full support and to offer any–”
“Ashok, cone of silence,” Callie interrupted.
Ashok paused in the act of shoving a whole slice of goat’s cheese and pesto pizza into his face in order to fiddle with a panel on his prosthetic arm. There was a brief buzzing sound, and then he gave a thumbs-up and went back to chewing.
“We’re in a sonic exclusion field,” Callie said. “Anyone more than a few centimeters from the back of our heads will hear us talking about, whatever, the weather, local architecture, small talk stuff. Ashok’s anti-surveillance suite samples our voices and then has an expert system remix them into something halfway between inane banter and word salad. There are also countermeasures in place to prevent surveillance. You can speak freely without being overheard, at least until the server comes back to refill the water glasses.”
Q nodded, smiling. “Thank the Green Lady. The situation here is fucked.”
“Give us some background,” Callie said. “We know people disappeared from the outskirts of the system, but that’s about it.”
Q nodded. “OK. The short version is, we’ve lost multiple survey ships, and a team of corporate auditors. They all just vanished. No beacons, no last messages, nothing.”
“You’d better go ahead with the long version too,” Callie said.
Q took a deep breath. “Right. Owain is a wonderful planet, but its accessible mineral deposits are limited. There is, however, a vast asteroid field on the outer edge of the system. The scientists think there used to be a planet there, but it was blown up, maybe by whoever built the bridgehead however many thousands of years ago.” She shivered. “Ancient aliens who blow up planets. I’m glad they don’t live in the neighborhood any more.”
We hope, Callie thought.
“Anyway, it’s rich pickings out there in terms of mining, and the corporation donated generously to the terraforming of Owain in exchange for the right to exploit the asteroids. The people in charge here, the weird conglomeration of artists’ organizations and utopian communities who have the charter for this system, wouldn’t allow any mineral exploitation at all until the terraforming was finished, though.”
“Ha. They may be artists and optimists, but they aren’t fools,” Callie said. “Corps aren’t famous for fulfilling their obligations after they get what they want, and they have whole armies of lawyers and expert systems devoted to wriggling out of the spirit of contracts. Definitely smart to extract full value from the corporation before letting them extract any from you.”
“Exactly.”
Callie quirked an eyebrow. “‘Exactly?’ Usually employees of the corp would say something like, ‘We would never renege on a contract, and we always act in good faith and in the best interests of the shareholders,’ or some similar bullshit.”
Q shrugged. “Cone of silence, right? You said I can’t be recorded, and I doubt you’ll report me to personnel resources for acts unbecoming a corporate drone anyway. I only started working for Almajara a year ago, when they began hiring people to prepare for harvesting the asteroids. I guess I’m not all the way indoctrinated yet. I’ve been on Owain for years, helping with the terraforming efforts – I’m a resource management person, really. I do supply and logistics work, and you’re all resources, which is why I’m managing you.”
“When did your other resources start to go missing?” Callie said.
“About six weeks ago. We had survey teams out, marking the most valuable targets among the asteroids, and they were sending back reports, until… they weren’t. All the teams in one segment of the asteroid belt went dark. Other surveyors in adjacent segments went to look for them, to see if there’d been an accident. We didn’t hear from them, either. The people Almajara sent to look for the missing surveyors all stopped communicating too. We sent a couple of locals, more familiar with the system, to check on things, and they didn’t come back. The locals won’t even go in that direction any more. Almajara finally sent a crew of specialized auditors, who went from the bridgehead straight out to check the last known locations of our survey teams. They were never heard from again. You know what our corporate auditors are like, don’t you, Captain Machedo? When an outpost or a development goes dark, it could be anything – pirates, catastrophic infrastructure failure that could make the company liable for damages, rival corporations, sabotage from disgruntled employees, militant separatists who think you’ve encroached on their turf… Our auditors are prepared to deal with any of those things. But whatever they found was too much for them.” She hung her head. “Something out there is killing my people.”
You hope, Callie thought. Killing, at least, meant an end to suffering. If the Axiom was involved, there were worse fates than death. “We’ll figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m sure that’s what the auditors thought too.”
“Corporate auditors are made for breaking strikes, hitting back at corporate rivals, hunting down money launderers, and frightening employees into submission. Eighty percent of them came up through the security services. They’re good at breaking stuff and containing a perimeter, and that’s about it. Those are useful skills, don’t get me wrong, but my crew can do those things too, and more besides.”
“Almajara auditors are famed for their investigative techniques, I thought,” Q said. “Or is that just public relations talking?”
Callie shook her head. “No, it’s justified, just… limited. The other twenty percent came up through accounting or data mining. They’re great at hunting down hidden records and following twisty financials and ferreting out spies – I’ll admit there’s nobody better – but this doesn’t seem like a money laundering thing, or industrial espionage. We’re qualified to approach things with a wider perspective.”
“Single-purpose tools are inefficient,” Ashok said. “We’re a multi-tool.”
“I hope you’re the right tool for the job,” Q said.
“You have a personal connection to this, don’t you?” Stephen said.
Q grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”
Stephen shook his head. “Probably not, but I’m CoED.”
“Coed?” Elena wrinkled her forehead. “Where I’m from, that meant men and women going to the same college, and it was considered a pretty outdated and binary term even then.”
“He means the Church of the Ecstatic Divine,” Q said.
“Ohhhhh,” Elena said.
Q cocked her head at Stephen, seeming to really look at him for the first time, and Callie noticed him straightening up under the attention. “But how did you know… oh, that’s right. I said ‘thank the Green Lady,’ didn’t I? So you know my affiliation. What’s yours?”
“Most of my congregation were machine elf. I’ve always been open to various guides, but I’ve personally had the best experiences with fractaline entities.”
Elena leaned over to Callie. “What are they talking about?”
Callie shrugged. “Religion. Drugs. Religion drugs.”
Q smiled at them. “Members of our church take sacraments that connect us to one another, and to the wider universe. The Church of the Ecstatic Divine is a
syncretic religion, incorporating ecstatic and hallucinatory traditions from assorted cultures. We differ from those traditions mainly by attempting to more rigorously control the dosages and compositions of our sacraments.”
“Instead of eating funny mushrooms they found in a pile of cow shit or taking a pill they got from someone at a club, they have custom-made psychedelic drugs tuned for different intensities and effects,” Callie said.
“Close enough,” Q said. “My congregation, probably because we were engaged in terraforming efforts to create a paradise on Owain, gravitates toward nature-based experiences. We seek a sense of oneness with the living world and all that world’s organisms. Sometimes, during our ecstasies, we encounter a figure we call the Green Lady, who guides us. Other affiliations focus on other entities – like the machine elves.”
“They’re remarkable,” Stephen said. “I watched the elves build a solar system once, moving with lightning speed, creating something from nothing. It was inspiring. Then there are fractalines – figures of pure abstraction, with shapes that shift and twist and offer insights along the way.”
“I had a friend in college who did salvia and DMT and stuff,” Elena said. “She talked about those kind of things.”
Q made a face. “Salvia? They still do that? Where are you from? I thought that sort of thing went out with bloodletting and trepanning and electroshock therapy.”
“Oh, I’m like five hundred years old,” Elena said. “I spent a lot of that time sleeping though, so I look pretty good for my age.”
Q looked at her uncertainly. “Really?”
“She’s a time refugee, yeah,” Callie said. “Anyway, not to interrupt all this fascinating talk about your various hallucinations–”
“Those entities are messengers from the greater mind of God,” Stephen countered.