Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera

A space opera

Chris Mead

Swallow the Sky

©2014 Chris Mead

ISBN:

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Cover
art by Derek Smith.

For my son-in-law

Alex Baker 1966-2009

One of life’s dreamers

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Translating idiomatic
speech is always challenging, especially when one of the languages originates
in a place and a time that has yet to exist. Most of the dialog in this story
is spoken in Universal, a synthetic language created by the colonists of New Earth
that eventually became the lingua franca for much of the galaxy. In translating
into Ancient English the key goal has been to maintain the spirit of the
communication rather than a strict rendering of the colloquial text. This has
inevitably led to the use of paraphrasing and even some anachronisms. The
reader’s indulgence is appreciated.

Carson — Commonwealth Mailman

Aiyana — Engineer for Clan Aniko

Asima — Mitan Security Officer

Sosimo — Mitan Security Officer

Paresh — Mitan Postmaster

Zhou — Mitan Security Commissioner

Shin — Clan Aniko Operative

Juro — Senior Elder of Clan Aniko

Larissa — Bargirl

Tabarak — Mitan Gangster

George — University Retainer

Naadira — Graduate Student

Kalidas — Renegade Academic

Lalita — Archives Official

Tallis — a Callidus

Ubay — Clan Aniko Heavy

Ming — New Earth Security Lieutenant

Zaakir — Employee at the Aether

Carruthers — Airport Controller

Renshu — New Earth Consul

Mother Baker — Archdeaconess of Lilly Cathedral

Salima — Orpheus Postmistress

Caelin — Lift Boss

Rasul — Orpheus State Treasurer

Gustav VIII — King of Orpheus

Adhiambo Cissokho — Leader of New Earth Colonists

Teng — Colonial Archivist

Koju Sakyamuni — Astronavigator

Aaron Lavan Samuelson — Leader of the Technical Alliance

Ship — Carson’s Starship

Buggy — Carson’s Interplanetary Transporter

Yongding — Colonists’ Starship

The Melt — a Nanotech Plague

The Array — a Large Radar Array

“What will be the nature of your dreams?” the
machine asked.

“Erotic, strongly erotic”

Well, why not?

The machine thought about
this.

“Very well, please
deposit twenty Ecus”

Carson cursed. It was not
supposed to ask for money.

“You know I own you”

“Is this too part of your
dreams?”

He swore again and shoved
the polished ebony cube aside. The two thousand year-old device had been an
impulse purchase on Procyon c. That would teach him.

“Never trust an antiques
dealer” he said aloud.

“Excuse me?” the buggy
said.

“Forget it.”

So much for sleeping his
way down the gravity well. Carson sighed and stared round the tiny spacecraft.
The buggy’s globular display gave him the illusion of peering into space
through a transparent bubble. Directly ahead a blue-white splinter of light floated
in the starscape: Mita, the local sun, and to its right a darkened green disk,
one of the system’s outer planets. Overhead was the one constant in Carson’s
life – the majestic arch of the Milky Way.

He fingered the stiff
collar of his suit. It was constructed of gray plant-fiber material that
completely covered his limbs, the goal being to cause the minimum of offense to
the maximum number of people. It was easy to make a mistake when arriving at a
new star system. His shorts had started a riot on Upsilon g.

“How far to go?” he
asked the craft.

“About a billion
kilometers”

He picked up the dream
machine and examined its shiny surface. The man who stared at him appeared
about twenty-five years old except for a certain wariness in the blue eyes. He
pushed back a tangle of black hair.
Twenty-five
– could he remember
being that young? On New Earth you were legally a minor until your thirtieth
birthday.

He turned the device
over. Perhaps if he cold-started it? No, he had already tried that twice. Of
course he could replace the logic arrays but then it would not be a genuine
antique.
Mind you
, he thought with a thin smile,
there were plenty of
people who would never know the difference
.

Maybe his spacecraft
could help.

“Hey buggy, can you
communicate with this thing?”

“Sure”

“Try persuading it to run
diagnostics”

There was a pause.

“It wants me to pay
twenty Ecus”

Carson gave up. He
slapped the palm of his hand against the payment pad and sub-vocalized a
command to his wallet, a storage device the size of a sand grain embedded
behind his right ear. Twenty Ecus flowed over his skin and into the dream
machine.

“Payment accepted. Please
put on the induction headband.”

He did as he was told and
stretched out on the acceleration couch. After two minutes of squirming he
turned off the inertial dampening. The field’s primary purpose was to protect
him from the buggy’s fearsome acceleration but it also provided a crude
simulation of gravity. Well, there was no need of that now. He floated
blissfully; zero gee was so much more comfortable. From here on in it would be
smooth sailing.

“Greeting and
salutations!”

What the –
. He had
only been asleep ten minutes before the cheerful voice echoed around the cabin.

“Welcome to our star
system. I am automatic welcoming agent Delta Alpha, presently in orbit about
Mita f. The People’s Republic mandates that all arriving vessels must be guided
by an authorized pilot. Please signal your acceptance.”

Blinking, Carson scanned
the starscape. There it was, an orange dot, Mita f, a Jupiter-class planet. He
groaned and pulled off the headband.

“Hello agent Delta Alpha.
I am willing to accept your pilot.”

There was no question of
dozing off again. He would have thirty minutes while his message traveled
across space to the orbiting robot but he had been jolted into full
wakefulness.

Finally a reply came
through.

“Thank you honored
visitor. Based on the class of your vessel the fee for local navigation is four
hundred Ecus. Please dispatch payment so that I can initiate transfer.”

Four hundred!
“Surely the official nature of my business means that I should receive a
complimentary service?”

More time passed. With a
grin Carson imagined the nonplussed agent pushing his demand to its higher
functions.

“I regret sir that your
request has been denied.”

Well it was worth a try.
He shot the money across the sky and awaited the arrival of the pilot.

Presently his buggy said:
“Carson, I have downloaded an autonomous agent certified by the Republic of
Mita that is requesting temporary control of this vehicle.”

“Okay, navigation only,
and watch the damn thing for any funny business!”

The chances of the agent
going rogue were vanishingly small but he had known stranger things to happen.

“Greetings honored space
captain!” said a new voice. “I have the pleasure of being your pilot today.
Please state your destination.”

Captain is it? Not to
mention first mate, mechanic, and cabin boy.
His starship, which he had
left lurking at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, was a one-man operation.

“Greetings to you too;
I’m heading to Kaimana”

“Excellent! Estimated
travel time using this vessel’s capabilities will be three hours.”

Carson squawked as the
inertial dampening kicked in and dumped him onto the acceleration couch.
Nevertheless, he was feeling more cheerful. Three hours should be enough time
to get back to sleep and rejoin his new friends in the hot tub.

“Roger that. Will we be
landing on the island?” Mita b, Kaimana’s official name, was covered entirely
by ocean save for one volcanic landmass.

“Regrettably not, all
vehicles must be parked in orbit and passengers taken down by shuttle.”

That made sense, it was a
small place.

“If you wish, I will
order a personal taxi to await your distinguished presence.”

“And that would cost?”

“Two hundred Ecus sir,
but I am authorized to offer a discount…”

He cut it off. “Public
transportation is available I suppose?”

“A variety of options
exist” the pilot replied cautiously.

“Thank you, I’ll wait
until I arrive.”

“Very well, do you have
lodgings booked, honored traveler?”

“Shut up”

The pilot lapsed into
sulky silence. Carson was tempted to jam on the dream machine’s headband but
the scenery was getting interesting. Directly ahead Mita f had swollen into a
huge disk. He watched as it eclipsed its parent star, encircling the occluded
sector with a thread of golden light. Nighttime on the gas giant was far from
dull. Blue-green aurora generated by its massive magnetic field blazed at the
northern pole and further south titanic thunderstorms spewed lightning bolts
big enough to split a continent. Extending into space from each side of the
darkened equator was an impossibly thin line: the planet’s ring system.

He decided to be nice to
the pilot. Whoever designed its personality had made it far too prickly.

“So tell me about Mita b”

“Your ship did not
receive our welcome package?”

“Yeah, but I never got
round to opening it”

“Then let me tell you of
the pleasures that await. Kaimana is an exciting playground for the adventurous
traveler. Amenities include –”

“Forget the travelogue,
tell me about the economy. I’m trying to make a living here.”

“As you wish captain. The
system was originally a staging post on the journey out from New Earth but tourism
now dominates commercial activity. The principal attraction is diamond coral.”

“I’ve heard of that…”

Kaimana would have
remained an isolated way station had it not been for the discovery on the
ocean’s abyssal plain. Now diamond corals were traded throughout the local arm
of the galaxy and visitors were flocking to see the extraordinary fauna in its
native habitat. The resulting economic boom had raised the permanent population
to a million the pilot said, with another million living off-planet, mainly in
the resource-rich asteroid belt.

“The People’s Republic is
a member of the New Earth Commonwealth so you will have no problem paying your
bills, honored sir”

“Thanks, but I’m really
interested in taking money, not giving it away”

Rising prosperity meant
that there would be a newly-affluent middle class looking for ways to spend. It
was only fair that he should help them.

“When I’m not on official
business I deal in antiques. Is there much of a market on Kaimana?”

“I regret that is beyond
my functionality”

Carson gazed out at the
universe. By now the buggy’s push drive was hurtling them towards the inner
planets at half the speed of light. Mita f’s sunward sector came into view,
appearing as a huge crescent striped in primary colors. There was something
unnervingly wrong about the atmosphere of giant planets, the writhing bands of
cloud seemed too organic to be the result of random weather patterns.

Perhaps all this
solitude really is affecting my mind
.

He cranked up the
screen’s magnification and panned across the planet’s surface, pausing to study
the black silhouette of one of the numerous ice moons. Even from this distance
there were signs of human activity. Outlined against the glowing chromophores
he could see that the little world was no longer perfectly circular – it
appeared as if a monstrous giant had been nibbling at its edges.

“Hey buggy, look sunward,
past the planet. Is there anything out there?”

His hunch was right.
There, twinkling against the blackness of space – a stately parade of ice cubes
the size of mountains heading towards the inner solar system. The satellite was
being disassembled to provision water for the arcologies of the asteroid belt.

He was tempted to quiz
the pilot about the colossal project but he couldn’t face another conversation.
Besides, one vital fact was obvious: Mita was flourishing.

Directly ahead a
brilliant white dot expanded into view – his destination, Kaimana. Carson
smiled and stretched, his long body spanning the axis of the cabin. He rummaged
through the luggage piled on the spare acceleration couch to reclaim the dream
machine.

“I’m going to resume” he
told it.

“Please deposit another
twenty Ecus”

“You are joking! I was
woken up –”

“Each sleep period is
charged separately as explained in my Terms and Conditions of Use”

Perhaps he should toss
the machine into the vacuum; he was out of ideas for turning off its demands.

“What in heaven’s name
are you doing with all this money? Saving up for a vacation?”

“Naturally, I will return
it to my owner”

“But that’s me!”

“That is correct. Do you
wish to collect my earnings now?”

“Oh dear God, yes!”
Carson shouted and smacked his hand against the payment pad.

Five hundred and twenty
Ecus flowed over his skin and into his wallet. Good grief, five hundred! The previous
owner could never have figured it out. No wonder he was eager to sell. He
jammed on the headband, closed his eyes, and laid back feeling supremely
pleased with himself. Even with paying the pilot he was still a hundred Ecus up
on the trip.

Two hours later he was
above Kaimana.

“Carson, I am pleased to
announce that your vessel is now in an authorized parking orbit. The contracted
function of this system is thus complete. Please acknowledge delivery of service.”

“So acknowledged.”

“The pilot has
deactivated” said the buggy.

“Roger that, flush it.
There’s supposed to be public transportation. Are you looking for a bus stop?”

“Already found one. We
are rendezvousing with a shuttle in fifty minutes.”