Delta Pavonis (16 page)

Sieglinde joined him in the holo pit. "Concentrate on this, everyone. This is the fate we barely escaped on Earth. It's possible they were attacked by aliens, but all appearances indicate planetary suicide. Tell them about the space facilities, Matthias."

"The remains of extensive launch facilities were found in several locations. They indicate space technology of about early twenty-first century level, still chemical-powered. There are orbiting fragments of what were once large space stations. They must have visited Xanadu, but whether the natives are their descendants or true natives we can't know yet."

"Any remains of the inhabitants found yet?" Forrest asked.

"None lying in plain view. Exposed remains are rather unlikely after such a time span. There are bound to be some entombed somewhere, but that will take more detailed exploration. They don't seem to have gone in for monumental sculpture, so we're still in the dark about what they looked like. Entrance apertures of the surviving structures are consistent with human proportions."

"What's on everybody's mind, I'm sure," Sieglinde said, "is the question of whether 'our' aliens had anything to do with this. Were these unfortunate people one of their failed experiments?"

"We're now going over the data on the fauna studied on Xanadu. If there is any correspondence with any found here at Delta Pav, well know there was some sort of contact," Pflug said.

It gave them a lot to think about. A great deal to depress them, as well. However, it was not the knowledge of a planet stripped bare of life, somber as that was, that saddened them.

It was late. For the two hours since Pflug's presentation, they had sat in the lounge-cum-mess hall discussing the implications of the new revelations. Nothing much had been decided except that all the action seemed to be elsewhere just now. Other people were getting famous and the media had all but forgotten Team Red.

"It's not fair!" Okamura was saying. "They're out there discovering humans, humans, for God's sake! And even getting shot by them! And here we are being labtechs and nursemaiding VIPs on tour to see the big lizards." His disgust was palpable, and it was shared.

"Poor, unfortunate victims," said Greenberg, the technician, who didn't share their sense of outrage, "haven't made a history-changing, self-immortalizing discovery in—what?—almost a year, now? We're going to have to petition Survey to find you something equal to your talents and stature." The rest of the technicians and non-Team Red personnel made appreciative noises. Nobody loves a prima donna.

"There speaks the voice of envy," Forrest said. "You homebodies can't appreciate what it means to push into the unknown. You like it safe and secure." The banter was tired, almost ritualistic, and no one could work up much interest. They were all accustomed to trusting their lives to incredibly fragile artificial environments in the midst of the most unforgiving environment of all. The Survey psych examiners had determined that the explorer temperament was a matter of restlessness and curiosity, not courage.

All chatter stopped when Hannie came in. Eyes bugged. Mouths dropped open. She had been out to the pool and was scrubbed within an inch of her life, but that was the least of the transformation. Her hair, unplaited for a change, hung in massive, glossy waves almost to her waist. She wore a clinging, one-piece jumpsuit that bared her back and shoulders and had a neckline plunging to the belt buckle in front. Most outrageous of all, somewhere she had found cosmetics. She walked to the table and sat demurely next to Dierdre.

"Not a word," she said. "A word from one of you and bones will break."

Dierdre wondered what it was, this mysterious combination of brain and gland chemistry that caused people, men especially, to take leave of their rational faculties. Nearly every day for months, these people had frolicked
au naturel
in the pool. After the first few weeks, Dierdre had overcome her self-consciousness enough to join in. All that time, Hannie had been no different from the other women, except for her size. Now, because she was partly covered with fabric and paint, the men couldn't take their eyes off her. They would claim, of course, that it was just because she looked different. They would be lying.

Then, there was the perfume. It was subtle, something she wouldn't have expected from Hannie, a woman whose usual tactic in any situation was to overwhelm with any resource she had available. Musk-based, most likely, just possibly containing one of the illegal pheromones. This would bear looking into.

After the impromptu session broke up, Dierdre and Hannie went out into a corridor, planning to casually run into Hannie's designated prey.

"The perfume," Dierdre said. "Got any more?"

Hannie wiped her sweaty palms on the snug seat of her coverall and extracted a tiny vial from a pocket hidden somewhere. She handed it to Dierdre. "Don't overdo it. Just a touch behind each ear and in your cleavage."

"The natural heat disperses the pheromones better that way?"

"No. Because that's where his face'll go first."

Dierdre eyed the vial dubiously. "That being the case, you should have put it in your belly button."

"I did. Where is he?" Hannie was getting over her nervousness and beginning to regain her huntress look. They couldn't find Pflug inside the lab, and decided it might look too deliberate to track him down in his room, so they went to see if he might be outside.

On the veranda, the humidity wrapped them like a warm, wet blanket. The field sloping down to the landing pad was floodlit, primarily so the caretakers could protect the animals and vegetation at the agricultural station from marauding local fauna. Three figures stood halfway down the slope, talking and gesturing, but too far away to hear.

"There he is," Dierdre said. "Looks like Sieglinde and Forrest are with him."

"Sure," Hannie said. "Wouldn't do to let him wander around all alone. Come on."

Surreptitiously, Dierdre dabbed the perfume in the recommended spots. She wondered if she ought to hedge her bets by finding some privacy and dabbing a few more spots. Then she decided that, by the time they were down to that, they would be past the perfume stage.

The three looked up when the two women approached. Sieglinde was showing them something on one of the instruments she had designed. Like so many of them, it looked like a plain sheet of transparent plastic. She favored them with one of her rare smiles.

"I was just showing Steve and Matthias something I discovered today. There's something buried here," she tapped the ground with her foot. "It's about twenty meters down and I'm pretty sure that it's part of the transporter's instrumentation."

"So far from the cave?" Dierdre said, absently. Her mind was elsewhere. Hannie nudged her. "Oh, yes. Matthias, this is Hannie Meersma. She'll be taking over as your guide and escort. She's the best bush guide we have."

"I'm, ah, very pleased to meet you." Pflug's eyes were slightly bugged and he seemed to have difficulty keeping his lower jaw all the way up.

Dierdre squinted at Hannie. It was hard to tell under the floodlights, but she seemed to be blushing furiously. Blushing!

"I'm sure we're going to get along," she said, twining a blonde lock around one finger. She smiled with what seemed to be twice as many teeth as any human mouth should hold.

A loud, bellowing honk split the outer darkness.

Pflug started. "What was that?"

"A styracosaurus," Hannie said. "One of the hornheads. You haven't seen any of our dinosaurs yet?"

"As a matter of fact, no." Pflug was getting over his shock, but he still couldn't take his eyes off her. The other three looked back and forth from one to the other like spectators at a sporting event, following a ball in play. "I haven't had time yet."

"Know what's the best way to see them, the first time?" She took a step closer to him, so that he had to look up to maintain eye contact.

"How?"

"By moonlight. Shall we?" She stepped closer yet. Manfully, he didn't step back.

"It's pretty, uh, untamed out there, isn't it?"

"You're not scared, are you?" she breathed.

"As a matter of fact, yes." He swallowed hard. "But, what the hell, let's go."

"That's the spirit." She put an arm around his shoulder and began to guide him toward the gloom. After a moment, his own arm slid around her waist.

Forrest gathered his scattered wits. "Hannie, there's only two of you and it's after dark. We have standing orders—"

She turned and smiled with her mouth, but he saw violent death in her eyes.

"—I mean, be careful, you know? Pick up a beamer at the guardpost."

She waved and the two walked away. Dierdre studied her retreating back and wondered whether Hannie had chosen the most flattering outfit. She looked good, but with her arm up like that, her deltoid bulged like an eight-pound-shot.

"Just when you think the universe has yielded up all its secrets," Sieglinde said, "something comes along to surprise you."

"I hope they'll be all right," Dierdre said. "Neither of them is exactly dressed for the outback."

Sieglinde smiled. "From the look of her, it's not going to matter much how they're dressed, once they get beyond the perimeter."

"I suppose strange pairings shouldn't surprise us," Dierdre noted. "Look at Derek and Antigone."

"Must be something in the air," Sieglinde mused.

"The dinos are the least of his risks," Forrest said. "That woman has real spinecracker thighs."

"You'd know?" Dierdre said sweetly but with a faint snarl, beginning to move closer.

Forrest kept a straight face. "I practice hand-to-hand with all my team members, you know that. Hannie's got a mean scissorlock."

Dierdre wondered whether she was playing this right; maybe she should come back with a line like, "You think she's the only one?", but that might be a little
too
blatant and, anyway, it was time for him to make a move. She checked the wind to make sure he would get the benefit of Hannie's perfume.

Sieglinde watched the two of them, slightly bemused. If Hannie's courtship was characteristically meteoric, this was not a totally unexpected development. The two who had become her principal assistants were like cats, alternately hissing and purring. It had been a question of which would break first, Dierdre's pathological distrust, or Forrest's stiff-necked reticence. As she had expected, the increasingly stable girl had made the first move. If Forrest blew this one, Sieglinde would lose some of the considerable respect she had for him.

Steve turned to Sieglinde, his eyes not focusing quite correctly. "Ah, Dr. Kornfeld, do you think you could spare us for a while?"

It would have been easy to tell the utter truth; that she had not really needed anyone since childhood. She decided to be kind instead. "No, this will keep until tomorrow. You two run along."

He smiled at Dierdre. "Let's take a walk." Arms placed identically with the previous couple, although with a certain inevitable mirror effect, they walked toward the edge of the illuminated area, choosing a different direction.

Sieglinde looked after them and was astonished that her eyes stung faintly. All her lovers and good friends were dead. Even her best enemies were gone. Unless she got the matter transmitter perfected, she would probably never see some of her children again in the flesh. She shook her head, disturbed at the sudden surge of maudlin emotion. Yes, there was definitely something strange in the air tonight. She would have to have atmospheric tests run.

She looked back into the face of her odd instrument, its transparent surface crawling with her personal, obscure symbology. No question about it, there was something down there. Tomorrow, they would commence digging.

When the sun came up Dierdre walked out onto the veranda, yawning and scratching. The air smelled fresh and she was alert and ready for anything, unlike most mornings. She felt sore but happy. Below, she could see two people coming up the slope, past the sheep and the maize field.

It was Hannie and Matthias, and while she wasn't exactly carrying him, she was helping him on the steeper parts. At last they reached the steps and trudged up to the veranda. At the top Hannie planted a solid kiss on his face, spun him around and sent him off toward his quarters with a pat on the rear.

As she walked past Dierdre she muttered, "Unpadded."

NINE

Dierdre set the specimen flask on the lab table when she heard the knock. The flask was all but invisible—a molecule-thick polymer produced at the southern petroleum fields. Stripes had been painted on its sides and around the lip to give the user visual orientation. More and more such items were being produced on-planet. Using the transporters, transportation for the smaller objects was virtually cost-free.

"Come on in."

It was Matthias, looking distracted and worried. But then, that was the way he looked more often than not. "Dee, we're getting some anomalous data from the station on Tithonus." Tithonus was the outermost planet of the system, an insignificant rock ball of no discernable use or exploitability. Even so, the aliens had left a transporter there, connected to the great polar relay station.

"Anomalous data is the only type we've been getting for years," Dierdre said. "What makes this notable?"

"It's something big, and it's headed toward us."

Something atavistic made her scalp prickle. "A comet, maybe?"

"The trajectory doesn't fit. It seems to be under guidance, whatever it is. Every few hours there are minute alterations of course. Velocity, course and course corrections indicate a rendezvous with this planet."

"One of ours?" she said weakly. "Maybe one of the other expeditions changed its mind and decided to head for Delta Pav."

He shook his head. "Wrong direction. Even if it was one of the expeditions that broke off all contact, they'd have had to start from the Sol system. Nobody could have passed us, turned over, decelerated and changed course, and come back from that direction. There hasn't been enough time."

"They're coming back, aren't they?" Somehow she had known it would happen, from the time she had found the transporter.

"
Somebody's
coming," he said. "ETA is about a year from the first sighting."

When he left she finished labeling her specimens and putting the sample bottles in the sterilizer. Her mind was buzzing as she washed her hands and since, as usual, she had forgotten to get any towels from supply, she dried them on the seat of her pants. Beneath her hands she felt a layer of soft padding that hadn't been there a few months before. She would have to get out of the lab and get some exercise, maybe get Sieglinde to turn her loose for a few weeks, let her guide an expedition into the bush. The guide force was shorthanded now. Hannie had headed up for orbit last week, since pregnancy was something no sane woman wanted to experience in major planetary gravity.

Turning the lights off, she left the lab and went out onto the veranda. The hot, muggy climate outside was as natural to her now as the shipboard environment of her childhood. The last time she had been up to visit her family had been a claustrophobic experience, something she could not have conceived of a few years before. It was unsettling, when you had always thought of yourself as a spacer.

Below her the base sprawled down the slope for half a kilometer, its vehicles and personnel rushing about in the streets in the last minutes before quitting time. People would be gathering in the Happy Stegosaurus, a bar strategically located between the lab complex and the base, next to the agricultural station. Something just under five years had wrought changes at a dizzying pace.

It made her feel hemmed in and left out, being confined to the lab so much of the time while the base became crowded. People who had sworn never to leave space had come down anyway, lured by the excitement of frontier life. She had intended to spend at least ten years as a first-in explorer before settling down and taking an administrative job. On the other hand, there were some definite advantages to her current position. She was about to experience one of them. A man and woman in Survey uniform approached her along the veranda, obviously wanting to talk to her but waiting for her to address them first. Yes, it was nice, being deferred to.

"Miss Jamail,'' the man said when she nodded, "the presentation on the 82 Eridani report is set for 2030. Will you be presiding?"

"I'll be glad to," she said. It was nice not being the lowest-ranking and least-favored of Survey's minions. She was Dierdre Jamail, famous explorer and first human being to travel by matter transporter. More importantly, she was Sieglinde Korafeld-Taggart's right hand. Sieglinde was phenomenally busy these days, even for Sieglinde. Dierdre not only assisted in the lab, she ran interference with the rest of humanity. At last, she had found a socially useful employment for her generally antisocial leanings. She was perfectly willing to face up to the most prominent and powerful of government or industrial figures and tell them to leave her boss the hell alone, she was busy.

It was an ideal pairing—Dierdre had the gall and Sieglinde had the prestige.

"This one's the strangest yet," the woman said. "I thought the last few were the limit." Of the last twelve expeditions to report in, eight had found Earth-type planets. Of those, three had human primitives in residence, two were nuclear wipeouts, and another had apparently been annihilated by poison or pestilence. Whether the last was done by its own inhabitants was still unknown, but they had achieved a high level of technological culture. That seemed to be the pattern everywhere so far—continuing primitive culture or technological suicide. All except for Earth, and they knew how narrowly that had been avoided.

"I've just heard something that may be far more important," Dierdre said, "but it'll take more data before we know."

"We've heard," the woman said. Dierdre wasn't surprised. News traveled with incredible speed in the new planetary societies as well as in Island World society, where official secrecy was considered more abhorrent than official corruption. Suddenly, she felt the need for company. "I think I'll go down to the Steg and see who's there. Come along, I'll buy you one."

The two looked surprised and flattered. "Of course," the man said. "We're off duty now."

As they walked down the slope Dierdre's belt unit beeped in a familiar pattern. She undipped it and raised it to her mouth. "Steve?"

"It's me. We're halfway up the volcano. Got some good holos of the little reps and protobirds that live up here. I may be back soon. I don't think this bunch will last the full ten days."

"Good. Run them hard tomorrow and maybe they'll give up. I miss you."

"At least you're back there with the air conditioning. See you soon." It clicked off and she clipped it back to her belt.

"What a liar," she said, smiling. "He'd never come out of the bush at all if he could avoid it."

"Don't you two ever get to trek out together?" the woman asked.

"Only when Sieglinde's off-planet. She always wants one of us around. Usually she prefers me because Steve isn't assertive enough with the Survey bas—" She gave their uniforms a wry look "—well, you know what I mean."

"We understand," the man said, laughing. "We plan to sign on with an independent as soon as this hitch is up."

"You can't get into first-in work without connections, these days," the woman said, "and who wants to be a flunky? I think you were the last one to make it in by screwing up."

"Jesus, Sara!" the man said, faking horror.

Dierdre giggled girlishly. Maybe these two weren't as twerpy as she had assumed. "When's your hitch up?"

"Three years," the woman said. "We came in on a pair-hitch." This was an arrangement allowing couples to stay together on assignments. If they had a falling-out in the meantime, tough.

"About that time, a bunch of us from Derek Kuroda's old team will be forming our own company. Look me up then. I might have something for you."

"It'll be something crazy?" the man said, eagerly.

"Derek and Sieglinde are charter members. I won't tell you any more about it." Official secrets were anathema, but commercial secrets were quite different. No ambitious firm surrendered an edge. The couple were so overjoyed at the prospect that, when they got to the Happy Stegosaurus, they insisted on buying the first drink.

Dierdre ordered white wine in a tall, chilled glass and sipped at it slowly. Unlike some of her friends, she drank abstemiously. Alcoholism and hangovers were things of the past, but her tongue and temper were difficult to control sober. Alcohol weakened her repressive capacities and led her into undiplomatic behavior.

People came in from their shifts, most of them calling greetings to Dierdre. She knew just about everybody. Some were her friends, but the old Task Force Iliad/Team Red crew was diminishing all the time: promoted, transferred to other assignments, invalided because of injuries, married and shipped out with their new mates. Work at the base had become routine and the one thing none of them could abide was boredom.

A quick beeping from her belt unit told her it was time to begin the evening's presentation. She waited for the go-ahead light. They no longer needed the amphitheater. Most of the permanent residences and workplaces were now equipped for full-environment holography. The teams in the bush could pick up the broadcast on their portable units. The flashing red ball appeared over the table before her and she began.

"Dierdre Jamail here, bringing you the straight stuff. For those of you who have been in a coma for the last 48 hours, the 82 Eridani expedition has reported in. At last, someone's found an advanced technological society that hasn't wiped itself out, but wait'll you see why. This one isn't as visually spectacular as some we've received, but we're giving you the full-environment treatment anyway. The 82 Eridani expedition spent several months exploring and putting this together before they sent it out. Pay close attention if you've ever felt any nostalgia for the good old days on Earth when life was simple."

The scene opened with a view of metallic structures and frames. The black sky, crystal-clear light and sharp-edged shadows indicated a vacuum environment. The voiceover began: "This is Gildan, the smaller moon of Abbatas. If you're wondering about the names, they're native. The Abbatans speak a language we can pronounce, so we didn't have to delve into Earth mythology to come up with names, for a change. It should come as no surprise to learn that Gildan translates as lesser moon' and Abbatas as 'the world.'

"Both moons were visited in the past by the Abbatans. And when I say the past, I mean it. These ruins are in such good shape because of lunar conditions. They are at least three thousand years old. These space ventures flourished for less than a century, then were abandoned."

The scene shifted to a planetary locale: an immense, sprawling metropolis of low buildings. And yet somehow metropolis did not seem like the right word. Another word occurred to them all, an old word, one from the histories: slum.

It was not that the place was filthy; on the contrary, it seemed quite clean. There was public transport in the streets in the form of long, segmented vehicles, and a large number of animal-drawn carriages. The streets were thronged with people, still too distant to see in detail, but overcrowding seemed to be no great problem. The buildings were shabby, functional, utterly without beauty or grace. The city lacked even the squalid attractions they associated with the holos of the legendary slums of the past: the sullen menace of New York, the raffish colorful charm of Shanghai, Paris, New Orleans, the cheerful decadence of 1920s Berlin, the disorderly splendor of ancient Rome and Byzantium.

"The entire planet is like this," continued the voiceover. "It's a true planetary culture, so ancient that only one language is spoken, without a single dialect or regional variant. Architecture everywhere is just as you see it here. As for art, it practically doesn't exist. There is music . . ." Replacing the voice came a rather unpleasant atonic sound of stringed instruments accompanied by a thumping, monotonous percussion. It was faintly ragalike, but without the intricate improvisation of the true raga. "There seem to be only four or five basic themes, upon which the musicians work minor variations. It's played at religious functions, to use the term rather loosely. These people have an all-encompassing religion, but it has no god or gods. In fact, it has no supernatural entities at all, nor a theology, cosmology or iconography. Apparently, it limits itself to ethical teaching."

The scene shifted to street level. For the first time, they had a good look at the inhabitants. For scale, a standard measuring rod had been set up and they could see that the natives were only slightly more than a meter in height. There seemed not to be a centimeter's difference in height among adults, and differences between male and female were so slight that only close examination revealed gender. They were rotund, with round faces and narrow eyes, and their earlobes dangled almost to their shoulders. Hair was black, growing in tight balls rather like a bushman's peppercorns, but the balls were marble-sized and rose to a peak in the center of the scalp. Skin was yellowish, with a bluish undertone. They looked amazingly like conventionalized Buddhas. Costume for both sexes was a loose, short, sleeveless robe and sandals.

"They aren't clones, although they look it. Genetically, they are so similar that some sort of genetic standardization must have occurred somewhere in their past. It's difficult to tell, because they don't bother with history very much. We found a few who could tell us something."

The scene shifted to a city park. Passersby glanced at the hulking shuttle parked on its spidery legs, but they revealed only flickering curiosity. Children stared with more interest, but were soon tugged away by parents. A male of indeterminate age sat cross-legged on the grass, facing an invisible interviewer. The man's words were computer translated, with a different voice used to supply words with no English equivalent. His lip movements did not, of course, match the words they heard. It seemed to be a language with few labial sounds, for his lips scarcely moved at all.

Interviewer: You are a scholar?

Native (with a shrug and duck of the head, seeming slightly embarrassed): I know a little. It is a hobby, learning of ancient things. It does not set me apart. I am by trade a smith. I make metal shoes for our [draft animals].