Happiness: A Planet (30 page)

“Sorry,” Jorge shook his head. “That’s a policy issue not a Service consideration. You will have to make representations to the City Senate.”

The spokesman nodded as if such was the answer he had expected.

“Right,” he rubbed his plump hands together, “I’ll transmit the film now to all Senate Members. I will also tell them that I intend to fully co-operate with you. I will also fully explain the possible risks.”

“I expected nothing less,” Jorge beamed at him.

“Even though a State of Emergency now exists, even though the Senate no longer has any executive powers, a Senate Meeting will still have to be called. As
a safety outlet if nothing more. That will take three days. I will probably, however, get an informal consensus beforehand; and I can, therefore, start requisitioning whatever you need now.”

“Thank you. But right now we have to visit Tevor Cade. If he has managed to talk with the Nautili, then all of this will be unnecessary.”

“You’ll have to use my plane,” the Spokesman led them to the door, “There’s only a small apron there. Wilderness. Tevor Cade’s ship already takes up most of it. My wife will take you.”

The Spokesman’s wife, quaint term, was as portly and amiable as himself. As she piloted the plane she pointed out to her two passengers places of interest below. Places of interest that is to her: she told them to whom each farm belonged, gave them a potted history of the family.

“That’s the Keal place. Best apples on Happiness. It’s the altitude. You’ll have heard of Belid Keal. She’s their young daughter. Pleasant girl. But shy. The Lucky One they call her now.”

When they passed from the land out over the blue sea Tulla asked the Spokesman’s wife if she had seen anything of the Nautili.

“Hide nor hair. If it wasn’t for the moon not being there, and the ships gone missing, wouldn’t know any different.”

With nothing but the wrinkled sea below, with no commentary to give her passengers, the Spokesman’s wife said to Tulla,

“Don’t suppose planet life would suit you?”

“Actually I don’t think I’d mind it. It’s pretty. And friendly. But for an astrophysicist it’s hardly the place to be.”

The Spokesman’s wife was a talkative woman; for something to talk about she quizzed Tulla about her work, what it involved, where her home was.

“Oh, here and there,” Tulla said. “You know how it is.”

“I forgot,” the Spokesman’s wife said.

They came in sight of the green and brown coast.

“Wilderness,” the Spokesman’s wife unnecessarily informed them; and with nothing to remark upon save what a clever man the Senate Member for South Five was, and how lucky they were to have him in the Happiness Senate, the small plane descended to the river estuary. Awen Mendawer was waiting for them on the apron.

Since Hambro Harrap’s departure Awen had been daily visiting the amphibious apes, filming them from the hide and from behind trees on the other side of the river. Tevor Cade had bleeped Awen and the Senate Member to warn them of the Director’s arrival on Happiness. Awen and the Senate Member had been back from the jungle but twenty minutes when the Spokesman’s plane landed. The Senate Member was in one of the cabins on the phone.

Awen filmed Jorge and Tulla as they emerged from the plane. Jorge and Tulla ignored him. Awen filmed them, one tall and thin, one tall and broad, as they crossed the apron to the research ship, and, filming them, he followed them inside. Tevor Cade removed his headphones and rose to meet them.

“You have been in contact with the Nautili?” Jorge tersely greeted him.

Tevor Cade distractedly told them exactly what had happened — the Nautili’s saturation response, all bar one of the buoys being destroyed, the Nautili’s hourly transmissions on that one remaining buoy.

“They appear to have permanently anchored it,” he said. “The motor’s no longer running and it’s not drifting.”

He then told them of the similarities with the research conducted on Elysia.

“What do you make of it?” Jorge asked him.

“I honestly don’t know,” Tevor ran a hand through his ungroomed hair. “What they’re transmitting to me now is no alphabet. Every character is different. Six hundred expressions every day. All different. All that I can think is that it has to be some kind of lexicon.” His hands turned one over the other as he sought words to further explain himself.

Tulla beheld a man engrossed in his work, humbled by his ignorance: gone was the smooth city fund-raiser who confidently knew all the answers.

“What of their mass transmissions to you?” she asked to help him over his block.

“That’s just it. Not one of the characters they’ve transmitted to me singly corresponds with any of those used in the mass response. In that they used the characters from the alphabets that I transmitted to them. From all of the alphabets, all mixed together. My only deduction so far is that they must have used all those different alphabets as one big lexicon. I’ve run some preliminary checks, and so far as I can see it looks like, right back to Dag Olvess, they’ve been using from the alphabets transmitted to them what most closely resembles their own words. If words are what they use. It’s the only way at the moment I can make any sense of it. If I can somehow find the rosetta key, make those alphabets correspond with what they’re transmitting to me now, then maybe we’ll know what they’re saying.”

“Have you,” Jorge asked him, “transmitted anything on your one buoy?”

“Don’t see the point.” Tevor frowned at him, “Until I know what I’m saying to them.”

“He’s right,” Tulla said. “We don’t want any misunderstandings before we start.”

“Start?”

Anxious and uncomprehending Tevor looked from Tulla to Jorge.

Jorge explained that they were going to attempt to make it easier for the Nautili to lay their slime trail by removing some of the mountains, 

“We’ve made a film giving the detailed reasons.”

“I’ve just been watching it,” The Senate Member for South Five and the Spokesman’s wife had come into the ship. “The Spokesman also asked me to tell you,” the Senate Member said, “that an engineer has volunteered to cut the road and that some of the equipment is already on its way.”

His message delivered, the Senate Member for South Five advanced on Tulla hand outstretched, introduced himself, asked her,

“You’re a a Nautili buff too?”

“Not at all,” Tulla laughed. “I’m an astrophysicist. This...” she gestured at the planet, at Tevor, at Jorge, “is an aberration.”

“Behold,” the Senate Member for South Five said to Awen’s camera, “another narrow specialist.”

During this exchange Jorge had been rubbing the top of his bald head in mild perplexity. That the inhabitants should have responded so quickly, and apparently so willingly, had surprised him. Planetary inhabitants are supposed to be arch-reactionaries: Jorge had expected to have to bulldoze his way through their bucolic phlegm. What he hadn’t allowed for was their reaction to his prevaricating predecessors, Munred Danporr and Hambro Harrap. After them Jorge’s openness and lack of condescension had come as a welcome change.

Other than that, Jorge’s approach was psychologically more acceptable to the people of Happiness, in that it asked them to actively contribute to the solving of, what was to them, their problem. No more were they the hapless bystanders on their own planet. Such, though, had not occurred to Jorge.

“You
can look at the film later,” Jorge told Tevor, “For the moment I want you to press on with deciphering their transmissions. Would a record of what they’ve so far transmitted on Elysia help?”

“If one’s been kept. Yes. It would certainly be a help. For comparison if nothing else.”

Jorge made some calculations,

“Elysia’s a round trip of 56
days. I’ll send a request back with the police ship. Now I want you to keep listening. Especially for any dramatic change in their transmissions. If they don’t like what we’re doing they may try to warn us off. Please be vigilant.”

Jorge turned to go. Awen, a camera not at his face, caught him by the arm.

“Did Hambro Harrap get back safely?”

“We don’t know yet,” Jorge told him. Awen held onto his thin arm,

“Any chance of me getting a lift back on the police ship?”

“Police ships do not carry passengers.”

“These are exceptional circumstances.”

“Quite. There’s a State of Emergency extant here. In a State of Emergency no-one leaves the area so defined without express permission. You, especially you, are not going to receive that permission.”

Jorge removed his arm from Awen’s grip and left the ship.

Tulla, the Senate Member and the Spokesman’s wife followed Jorge down the ramp.

“Poor man,” Tulla referred back to Tevor. “It must have all seemed so very straightforward to him.” The Senate Member laughed,

“You of all people should know better than that. Here, as in space, the straightest route isn’t always the shortest.”

They reached Jorge beside the Spokesman’s plane. Awen, lugging his two black cases, cameras banging about his body, came hurrying after them.

“Can I come with you?” he asked Jorge.

“Not my plane,” Jorge said, and turning from him folded himself through the door. Awen looked helplessly to the Spokesman’s wife, who in turn looked to the Senate Member, who, with a wink at Awen, nodded. Tulla and the Spokesman’s wife helped Awen with his cases.   

The mountains between the two seas were of yellow rock seamed with purple. Awen filmed them as the plane made several slow passes over the proposed route. The Spokesman was now piloting his plane.

“They look very substantial,” Tulla said of the mountains, uncertainty in her tone.

On this part of the planet it was now dusk. The mountain summits cast long indigo shadows. The valleys and crevices seemed deep and dark.

“Think it can be done?” Jorge asked the Spokesman.

“Oh it can be done,” the Spokesman assured him. “Question is — how long will it take?” He pointed ahead to a small silver plane sat atop a plateau, “She’ll let us know soon enough.”

The Spokesman contacted the woman in the plane below, asked if there was room enough for him to land near her. She gave him instructions to approach from the rear of her plane, to land directly behind it.

“I want you out of here within thirty five minutes though. First load should be here by then. Won’t be room enough on here for a gnat when that gets here.”

The Spokesman told his passengers to strap themselves in; then, concentrating over his screens, made his landing approach. Awen held one camera against the fuselage window, used another to film the plane’s occupants. By the time they touched down the Spokesman was shining with sweat and Tulla Yorke and Jorge Arbatov were rigid with tension. Awen, though, was beaming in anticipation of some exciting footage.

A short stubby woman was standing among an assortment of equipment under the triangular wing of her plane. Her grey hair was
tied back and tucked into the collar of her tunic. She had thick round red forearms. After the introductions, and thanking her for acting so quickly, the Spokesman asked her how long it would take to cut through the rock.

“Depends,” she said, pointed to a console: wires led from it into the plane. “I’ve gone over the route, made a program. Some specifications need clarifying. This is the route?” she asked Tulla. Tulla studied the map under the screen grid.

“Looks like it. The shortest physical distance between the two seas?”

“It has to be straight?”

“Yes.”

The engineer pulled a face. Awen filmed her. The skin around her eyes was deeply wrinkled. She and Tulla went on to clarify other points of what the engineer called ‘the road’. The maximum permissible height above sea level, the gradient.

“Means cutting through, vertically, 80 kilometres of solid rock.”

“You have the equipment?” Jorge asked her.

“Use lumber cutters. Re-tune the torches. Only takes a couple of hours. Be going too deep to use sonics.”

“Will they be sufficient?”

“Got four promised. Any more and they’d get in each other’s way.”

“I meant,” Jorge said, “will those torches be powerful enough?”

Stood in that landscape, the surrounding yellow peaks reaching up into the darkening violet sky, it seemed impossible that they should be so casually discussing the removal of those towering mountains.

“I use ‘em for most land clearance. All that’s different here is scale. I’ve got a couple of tractors coming in first — level out a landing ground. You want me to make a separate apron for the police planes?”

“No,” the Spokesman said. “We don’t want them this close. They’ll be stationed at Mart’s and Toom’s farms.”

“How long will it take to build this road?” Jorge asked.

“Depends where I can put the rubble. And you say you don’t want the road wet?”

“Between the seas they avoid water,” Tulla said. “We thought we could put the rubble in the marshes on either side.”