Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy (22 page)

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

****

Pearce disembarked from the cutter alongside a handful of other personnel coming back to the
Harvest
for duty shifts. It had been a quiet ride, each star-mariner lost in his own contemplations. He was thankful for Pott, his thoroughly competent, seemingly indefatigable Australian Lieutenant, but the man deserved some shore leave, too, and with Fletcher consumed by her work on the surface, they were the only two remaining senior officers to share shipboard duty, so they rotated every couple of days. To be honest, the captain didn’t mind.
I might be the only one happy to be coming aboard
, he thought. He liked being on his ship. It had an orderly familiarity that gave him a sense of control, of order. It wasn’t that matters ashore were problematic; to the contrary, since their arrival everything had fallen into quiet routine rather swiftly. Regular reports from Sir Green were optimistic about the progress of their gathering and testing of the needed flora, aided so cooperatively by Arkadas’ young deputy, Jairo. The captain was forced to admit to himself that, despite his own initial misgivings about him, particularly his sudden chemistry with Fletcher, the man had been a godsend. His scientific expertise and field knowledge were precisely what Green and Reyes needed to conduct their work swiftly and efficiently. Just that morning, Green had given him some sample seeds as proof of their progress.
With any luck, we’ll be gone before the month is out
, he thought.

Luck
. He didn’t trust it. It had betrayed them on the voyage here. And yet none of his fears about the return to Cygnus had yet materialized. Sure, the military seemed more formal, more vaguely menacing than he remembered from his first visit, but that might be no more than his own imagination. The intellectuals had been welcoming, and the crew were taking their scheduled turns on the surface, engaging in the usual pastimes of sailors in a foreign port – seeing the countryside, eating exotic food, relaxing, and socializing with the local women and men who always seemed to make themselves available.

“Captain.”

Zoltan Szakonyi, the ship’s surgeon, cadaverous and humorless as ever, was waiting in the shuttle bay, apparently for him.

“Doctor,” Pearce answered. “What can I do for you?”

“Come with me to Surgery,” Szakonyi said. “There’s something you need to see.” The captain frowned. The ship’s surgeon was a spare, gray man, too old at a glance, yet he never showed fatigue or complaint. Pearce realized that despite their months together on the trip from Earth, he knew precious little about him. He occasionally included messages in the
Harvest
’s interstellar communications packages, directed at a grandchild, uninteresting though vaguely affectionate. Szakonyi messed with the officers, but rarely entered conversation, and always seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. He was not, Pearce certainly knew, a frivolous creature. Whatever it was he wanted, it must be important. The physician made a gesture, and then followed behind Pearce.

Surgery was a tiny, cramped space, with a single DATA (Diagnostic and Treatment Alcove) and workstation. The rest of the cabin was given over to storage of medical equipment, surgical tools, and pharmaceuticals. Naturally, given the appetites of too many able jacks, the place was always locked. Szakonyi shut the door peremptorily, and began to speak without preamble.

“You have no doubt noticed the avidity with which our crew members respond to the Cygni.”

Pearce had to smile. There was an old axiom in the service: “Past Pluto, all men are bachelors”. He had never really subscribed to that personally; he loved Mary, and had seldom been tempted, even in some of the more notoriously licentious locales he had known. That said, he knew life belowdecks well enough that he looked the other way at most of their shore leave behaviors. Most of the crew were unmarried anyway, either too young, or too sullen to attract a spouse, or simply content with their unattached life. There was, even so, truth to the surgeon’s words. Pearce had noticed, even on his first visit ten years before, that the natives here seemed unusually eager to please their guests. And the crew even more eager than usual to take advantage of that offered hospitality. He had ascribed it, with disinterest, to the remarkable handsomeness of the Cygni, and the remote isolation of the system. He shrugged.

“Past Pluto, Doctor.”

“Yes, yes.” The surgeon waved a spidery, dismissive hand. “I’ve been in space since before you were born, sir, and have seen no shortage of shore leaves, many during much longer cruises than this. I’ve treated every venereal discomfort we know of – Apraxian syphilis, star itch, scorpions.” This did concern Pearce.

“Are the jacks complaining of some new ailment?” The last thing he needed was a – literal – rash of sickness among the crew. That would slow down progress. “I seem to recall from a decade ago that the Cygni were clean in that respect.”

“No,” Szakonyi responded. “I bring the matter up only to remind you of my breadth of experience in this arena. The Cygni appear to be relatively disease-free, though whether they remain so after our visit is an open question.”

“What, then?”

“This.” The surgeon powered up the wide vidpanel above his desk, tapped a few times at the keypad, and the monitor became a kinetic display of bizarre shapes, lurid green and pink against a dull gray background, swimming feverishly against one another like a maddened mob.

“Beg your pardon, doctor, but I’m a starman, not a scientist,” Pearce said. “What the hell am I looking at?”

“You are looking, Captain, at a sample, magnified a hundred times, of the exhalation of a typical Cygni. A male, in this case, and young, but representative of the type. Women appear much the same, from our studies. Much of what you see closely resembles our own respiratory wastes – carbon dioxide, et cetera. As has been observed, the Cygni are remarkably similar to us in their physiology.”

“But you’ve found something different.” A chill was creeping up Pearce’s spine, the beginnings of a vague, cold premonition.

“With the help of Dr. Reyes, yes. The little green circles, you see them? Those are, as far as my extensive experience goes, unique. They appear to be, for lack of a better term, pheromones.”

“Phero-what?”

“Pheromones. A chemical agent, secreted and released by the endocrine system of the individual exhaling, mixing with their breath during respiration. These agents, upon entering the body of another individual, produce a curious reaction. I should say, rather, a range of reactions, from a calming of the nervous system, generating a sense of ease, of well-being, to a more visceral, more excited response, verging on sexual pleasure.”

“Come, Doctor,” Pearce said. “You want me to believe these people spit love potion?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Szakonyi seemed offended. “First of all, it’s not saliva, it’s gaseous. And it’s nothing so trite as
love
potion. It’s a complex chemical reaction, which I’m certain depends on a host of societal and biological factors. You’ve no doubt observed that the Cygni are a widely dispersed, highly tribal civilization. Dr. Reyes suspects, and I concur, that it likely emerged as an evolutionary advantage enhancing the mating prospects of certain Cygni, as well as a facilitation of breeding across tribal groups. There are comparable phenomena, she reports, in certain flora, including the…”

“Dr. Szakonyi,” the captain interrupted, unwilling to endure a secondhand lecture from Dr. Reyes on plant biology, especially given his own ignorance on the subject and how often he’d been required to display that ignorance over the last few weeks. “If I understand you, and it’s entirely possible that I don’t, you’re saying that there’s something in what these Cygni exhale that makes others want to like them?”

“Or even love them,” the surgeon replied, stiffly. “Or, more properly, react to them with sexual favorability. If our physiological systems are sufficiently similar to the Cygni that we can metabolize their food, I have to imagine we would have some susceptibility to this effect as well. Much more controlled study is needed, of course, before we can even begin to understand the chemistry involved. But I tell you about this so you will be aware that our responses to the Cygni – the crew’s, even yours and mine – may be artificially softened by this quirk of biology. And if there are other attractions – friendship, say, or sexual desire – they may be strengthened and intensified by these agents. It could act as an intoxicant, compromise decision making, even blunt other loyalties and priorities.” He raised both sparse white eyebrows in emphasis. The doctor was not a stupid man, and he was making a point. “Perhaps substantially.”

Damn
, thought Pearce.
Fletcher.

Grounded

Follow me
, he had said.
Trust me.

Christine Fletcher would have followed Jairo to the far reaches of the universe, so she followed him now. It should have bothered her, she knew, at least a little, that she was so infatuated, so quickly. She had known her share of lovers, of course, but never had she known such raw ignition of her passions. She had always held some part of herself apart, in reserve, but now Jairo compelled a complete surrender, giddy and terrifying. That should have upset her, but it didn’t. She had never defined herself by her relationship with any man, and yet now the entirety of her world orbited the fiery star of him. In some irresistible way, he reminded her of her grandfather, utterly male, strong, and yet kind, too, with a depthless reservoir of love.

And it was not just him, but him and Cygnus.

You’ll have to leave him, and Cygnus, too
, said the voice inside her that spoke hard and ugly truths.

Not yet
, she replied to herself, shoving the voice aside, burying it beneath layers of ecstasy and immediacy.

So she followed him, as she had when he showed her the oceans and woods of this world, the fields and bakeries and markets. Now he brought her into parts of Horfa she had not seen, that no Englishman had seen. These were older districts, with rough-hewn stone walls, some even unmortared, along narrow streets where no children played; places where age lay thick and heavy. If buildings could be made of dust and memory, it was these, aching with the effort of remaining upright, leaning on one another in companionable dotage.

“You are about to see something forbidden to any eyes not of Horfa,” Jairo said, a cheery dismissal of a taboo that should, perhaps, have given him greater pause. It thrilled her and made her hesitate, but the warm hand in hers pulled her onward, inexorably, to a small open plaza of inlaid stones, a mosaic of milky white with coppery tendrils that formed an intricate pattern throughout.

“This is the Hearth,” he said, his voice low and reverential. “And there,” he pointed to a stone-and-beam structure facing the plaza, topped by three black-and-red spires that reached skyward to the heavens, twisting and entangling until the eye could not pull them apart, “that is where we are going.”

“A cathedral,” Fletcher said in hushed English, unable to find the Cygni linguistic counterpart. It was a fraction as tall as most buildings on Earth, but it dwarfed its neighbors, seeming to stretch impossibly high, spires threatening to puncture slate-colored clouds gathering in the gloaming.

“Perhaps in your tongue, Christine. This is a
takat
, a Faithhouse. The
Takat
, in truth, the first and oldest in Horfa. Come. It will be better if we go in early, before the crowds of evening worshipers.” He smiled, radiant in the half-light, and took from his pack two long robes of gray. “Put this on. We all wear them for the service. None will know you do not belong.”

Fletcher took the robe, shrugging into it hurriedly, glancing about the deserted plaza. Jairo reached out and lifted the cowl of the robe, tucking in her hair as he did so.

“Why gray?” she asked, as Jairo donned a similar garment.

“Because in the
takat
, there are no blue soldiers, no brown scholars. In the eyes of the Faith, we are all the same.” He indicated the massive black iron doors in the stone face of the Faithhouse. “Those won’t open for another hour or so, but I know another way in.” He held out his hand again, and in his eyes was the same message.
Follow me. Trust me
. Again, Fletcher did.

She trailed behind Jairo as he rounded a corner of the
takat,
moving quickly down a blind alley where the base of one of the spires jutted out from the wall, almost into contact with the adjacent building. Jairo pulled her behind him, squeezing through the remaining space, coming to a set of stone stairs cut into the wall, so cleverly hidden behind the tower that they would escape all but the most determined investigation. They descended these, finding at the bottom a small wooden door. Fishing in his pockets, he produced a small black key with a red stone set into its head.

“How…?” asked Fletcher, and for the first time, she felt the tiniest twinge of uncertainty.

“Very few know of this door,” he admitted. “But I’m an intellectual. It’s my business to know things others don’t. And as for the key, well, let’s say it has always been of benefit to my caste to keep an eye on the clergy.” With a soft click the key unlocked the door, which creaked ever so slightly as it swung inward. Jairo slipped into the impenetrable darkness and the odor of stale antiquity beyond. Curiosity overwhelmed her indecision, and Fletcher plunged after.

When the door closed behind them, there was no light inside, not the scarcest hint of the dim twilight world outside. Then Jairo was there, his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, moving under her robe, and the suddenness of it made her almost cry out. When they finally broke, she was out of breath.

“You didn’t bring me all the way here to take advantage of me,” she whispered, while she ached to continue.

“No,” he replied, formless and near, still holding her, heat radiating from him. “But it will be quite some time before we can emerge from this basement and safely merge with the crowds. Can you think of a better way to spend the time, knowing that any night might be our last together?”

“In that case,” Fletcher whispered, groping for the front of his robe and yanking it open, pulling him toward her in a fierce embrace.

That was the last time.

After, they readjusted their vestments as best they could in the blackness. Fletcher felt Jairo’s finger laid tenderly across her lips. She nodded her understanding, and he moved away, leaving her suddenly and completely alone. Being alone had never held any terror for her, nor had the dark, but at that moment, she felt his absence like an amputation, and the weight of it, of all the days to come when she would be without him, fell on her.

You’ll have to leave him.

Not yet.

Light spilled into the room then, a thin spike of gray, turning the blackness into murky gloom. It was a basement, the outlines of stacked tables, bookshelves, and other such artifacts coming into half-focus around the walls. She could see Jairo, too, his hooded form huddled by the door. He beckoned, once, swiftly, and she hurried to join him as he stepped into the hallway beyond. It was empty, a bare corridor of thick stone, chilly and damp despite the heat of the summer evening above. In the space of a few dozen steps, it ended in a circular stairwell which they swiftly ascended. After a few moments, Jairo turned and leaned in close to her.

“You are not prepared for what you are about to experience,” he said plainly. “And I will not spoil it for you. Keep your hood up and your face hidden. And no matter what happens, do not be afraid. I am with you.”

These words from the man she knew she had come to love above all in the galaxy chilled her blood and set her mind racing with excitement. Most likely it was mere religious pageantry, meaningful to the Horfans and unlikely to move her, but it should still prove a fascinating cultural observance. And they were together.

The curving stairway ended, debauching into a much larger and wider hall, paneled with wood. Every inch was carved in minute detail, gilt throughout, with scrolling stonework similar in color and style to the plaza outside. Fletcher tried to examine it more closely, but Jairo was walking rapidly, and she hastened to catch up. Ahead, she could see more hooded figures, in swirling clusters, and she had no desire to lose contact with him in the gathering mob. Collectively, the Horfan mass streamed through a wide arch. Beyond was a huge hall, wider and deeper than any interior space Fletcher had yet seen on Cygnus, stretching high above to disappear into a distant unknown ceiling.
It truly was a cathedral
, she realized, or its analogue. Hundreds of robed natives clustered, standing, in a gray mass of humanity.

Humanity
? thought Fletcher, and then,
why not
? There were those on Earth less human than the Cygni.

A muteness fell over the throng then, a hush of expectation. A high dais ran across the front of the long sanctuary, and there, three figures materialized from behind a massive woven tapestry. They were all young women. Young, or perhaps not so much young as of an indeterminate age, and beautiful, wearing hoodless robes of red trimmed with black. All had brown hair, or at least so it seemed at first, but as the light flickered along the rows of guttering torches in wall sconces that flecked the nave with gold, Fletcher’s eyes played tricks on her, casting the tresses of the priestesses in black, then red, then shimmering silver.

Fletcher began to whisper a question to Jairo, but he made a tiny shake of negation and she fell quiet. Music began, slow, insistent, thrusting, emanating from unseen musicians. The priestesses were moving in time with the glacial harmony, creating something less than dance but more than pantomime, in deliberate, exaggerated, almost sensual movement. Slowly, methodically, the volume built, pounding in an inexorable rhythm, vibrating the base of Fletcher’s skull and reaching out to her at some level below her civilized consciousness, beneath her aware self; some level more visceral, more primal, more savage.

Then another woman came onto the stage, taller and perfect. Looming like a vague, slender giantess, she raised long arms draped in jagged red. The lesser dancers melted away behind velvet black curtains as the music reached a holy crescendo followed by absolute silence. The audience’s breathing came in regular, modulated cadence as if they were not many individuals but one communal creature, poised in avid anticipation. The head priestess spoke, and as she did, her words were rhythmic, archaic, and difficult for Fletcher to follow. At the same time, they felt as familiar as the blandishments of a hundred other faiths, words of pronouncement and prescription, their literal import less gravid than their effect on the gathered faithful. Fletcher had never been a pious woman, though the Ochoas were nominally Catholic, but she was not immune to the charisma of the priestess. It acted like a physical force upon the worshippers as she wove together ancient stories with guidance for modern life. Fletcher began to feel warm, then drowsy, as the words washed over her like lapping poetic waves, until the congregation shouted in responsorial unison, repeating the mantra “Horfa is chosen” two, three, then four times. It was then, in the midst of such fervor, that Fletcher felt the raw soul of the Horfan people unvarnished before her, with such beauty and power that tears came to her eyes and it was all she could do to keep from falling to the floor or embracing Jairo then and for the rest of her life.

Eventually the services ended and they departed along with the other parishioners, her heart swollen with love for this place, these people, and this person. Still in their dull robes, she pulled him into a shrouded alley and stared at him with incredulity.

“Why did you show me that?” she asked.

“It is the heart of who we are as a people,” he replied with a stormy flash of gray in his pale blue eyes. “And I would have you know our heart. My heart. Because custom demands that I shouldn’t, and I don’t want any custom or taboo between us; no secrets or regulations. Limitations are for lesser loves than ours, Christine.” He kissed her, and she responded, there in the shadows of those ancient walls, fiercely and long, and as they broke their breath mingled in the cool dusk air.

“Your scientists have almost finished their work,” he said huskily. She nodded in response, unable to speak. “You will be leaving soon?”

“The…the ship will, yes.”

“And will you be on it?” His gaze was searching, powerful, and she had to look away, down, anywhere but into those eyes of melting ice.

“I have no choice, Jairo. Desertion is the worst crime there is in the Royal Navy, short of mutiny. Captain Pearce couldn’t allow it.” A bold and sudden idea seized her then, and she blurted it out. “You could come with us! As a cultural and scientific ambassador from…” her voice trailed off as she saw his shaking head.

“I can’t, my love. I can’t leave my work here, my obligations, any more than you can yours. You know I am slated to succeed Arkadas in leadership of my caste when he retires in a few years. I would leave the task to someone else, but I fear how weak the intellectual influence would be under less prepared leadership. And this is something I have long desired and worked toward.”

Fletcher sighed, a sigh that became a laugh that became a choked sob.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave,” she said, softly, gathering his gray robe in her fists and pressing her face against his chest.

“But you must, as you say. Just as I must not.” He put a hand under her chin and forced her face up, gently, and smiled at her. “Do not cry that you are leaving. I would cry if you had never come. And I meant every word I said about lesser loves. This is not the end for us, Christine Fletcher. We will see each other again, I know it.”

She stepped away from him then, pushing her knuckles into her eyes, taking a long, slow swallow of the clean night air. Her mind was full of the vastness of space between here and Earth, of time and distance, and it threatened to swallow her whole. She battled back against the yawning chasm of despair before her, pushing it back one more time.

“You have been so generous and helpful,” she said, desperate to change the subject. “And have asked so little for yourselves in return.”

“We’re a generous people,” Jairo said. “Of what you’ve asked for, we have plenty to give. And it has certainly been the pleasantest month I have ever known.”

“Even so.” Fletcher pulled free of him again. “We’ve gotten what we came for. I would feel bad if all you got in return were technological advances you likely would have made for yourselves in a few decades. I wish there were something more tangible we could do.”

“If you’re going to insist,” responded Jairo, “there is one thing I will admit to being curious about.”