The Devil's Nebula (21 page)

Carew said, “And armed?”

Gorley smiled. “The only members of our party who will be armed are the militia, Captain. Ms Takiomar, kindly bring us down three kays from the clearing.”

Lania eased herself into her sling. The
Hawk
banked and, in a few minutes, came in to land, incinerating a great swathe of the jungle canopy and the undergrowth as it did so.

T
WO BULKILY ARMOURED
militia led the way, and two more brought up the rear. Between them, Carew and the others marched in single file through the ash path created by the leading militia-men.

The vegetation here was alien and grotesquely swollen. What appeared at first glance to be tree-trunks turned out, on closer inspection, to be the probosci of things that lived in the high canopy and hoovered sustenance from the jungle floor. There were bona fide tree trunks here and there, but they were bulbous and etiolated and covered with spines that writhed and surged as if questing for victims. Leaves and flowers were overblown and much bigger than anything Carew had seen before; he felt like a dwarf passing through some kind of crazy, genetically-engineered wonderland.

After an hour of solid marching, Gorley called a halt.

They sat around in a circle, watching the swinging probosci of a canopy creature come snuffling across to them: thicker than a man’s torso, fortunately it was a herbivore and harmless. It merely sniffed its way around the group, probing and patting like an affectionate elephant’s trunk, and then went on its way.

Strange flying creatures, part insect, part bird, moved around them so swiftly that the eye could not properly focus on their iridescent darting forms.

Carew drank ice-cold water and watched Jed’s wide-eyed fascination at the world around him.

Lania said, “How could any human being adapt to this?”

Gorley smiled. “You’d be amazed at how adaptable we are, Ms Takiomar. Even across the Expansion, humanity has adapted itself to survive on what we might think of as inimical worlds.”

Jed said, “The ice planet of Kergulen, for instance.”

“Or even more hostile,” Choudri put in, “Hellebore, Sirius II. Its atmosphere has a higher than normal carbon dioxide content; colonists must be genetically adapted to breathe there.”

Jed laughed. “Why do they bother?”

“They mine diamonds,” Choudri said. “A one-year stint can make a man a millionaire, or kill him.”

Lania grunted, “Give me Xaria any day.”

Carew said, “Anyway, the fact is that the colonists here didn’t choose the blue world, or whatever they call it. They were
brought
here, after all.”

It was a fact he could not dismiss: the colonists had travelled light years through the void and across hostile Vetch space, to end up on a terrifying world at the behest of the floating aliens.

He thought of the bloated creature in the long-house and, not for the first time, wondered what the hell was going on.

They stood, shouldered their packs and set off again through the jungle, the leading militia-man clearing a path with timed blasts of his pulse-beam.

One hour later they came to the edge of the clearing. Gorley sent a militia-man to scout ahead. Carew felt his pulse quicken as he anticipated the reception they might receive. The colonists had been here for perhaps seventy years. Probably none of the original crew were still alive; these people would be the second and third generation, quite unused to meeting human strangers bearing all manner of technological apparatus they had never seen before.

The leading militia-man returned. “So much for sneaking up on them unannounced. They must have heard us coming. They’ve mustered a welcoming committee.”

Gorley said, “Hostile?”

The militia-man shook his head. “I don’t think so. Come and look.”

Cautiously, the group followed him through the undergrowth, then came to a halt on the margin of the jungle. Carew, with Lania at his side, knelt and peered through a stand of thorny ferns.

Perhaps a thousand people – the entire population – filled the near end of the clearing. They sat crossed-legged, patiently staring into the jungle. Carew felt that every pair of eyes was boring directly into him. A man and a woman sat at the front of the group, their heads together as they conferred.

Gorley said, “We go together, hands raised, is how I think it’s done. Alleghri, Thomas, stay here and cover us. If there’s any trouble, fire only to stun, okay? On no account shoot to kill.”

Self-consciously, Carew rose from his crouched position and raised his hands, aware of Lania doing the same beside him. Gorley and Choudri led the way.

Carew stepped from the shade and into the clearing and the first thing he noticed was the bloated sun on the horizon and the furnace-like blast of its heat.

The crowd stood as one, a wave of humanity coming to their feet with a murmur like surf. Their leaders remained seated, then turned and gestured. The crowd reseated itself in silence.

They were blonde-haired to a person, their bodies tanned deep brown. Carew had them down as Nordic, or perhaps Germanic, though short and slight.

He, Lania and the others remained on the edge of the jungle, arms raised, smiling rather tensely at the seated man and woman.

Slowly, their expressions serious, the pair rose to their feet and held out their hands.

“Greetings, strangers,” the woman said, in a dialect hard at first to understand, the vowels drawn out and deep. “We have been awaiting your arrival.”

Gorley was the first to voice their collective surprise. “You have?”

“We knew you were on your way, strangers.”

Which was not, Carew thought, that surprising when he came to think about it; they were creatures of the jungle, alert to sounds that would give away the approach of all-comers.

Choudri smiled. “You saw us, or heard us?”

“Neither, stranger,” the woman replied. “We were told of your arrival here.”

“Told?” Gorley said. “By whom?”

The woman averted her gaze, looking at the sandy ground. The man spoke for the first time, “The sun is hot and you must be thirsty. You are our guests. Please, come into the shade and we will talk.”

The man and woman stood and walked around the seated crowd, towards a long-house similar to the one, a kilometre down the clearing, in which the bloated creature dwelled. Gorley led the way around the crowd and Carew followed, aware of the curious scrutiny of the gathered colonists.

They came to the long-house and stepped into its welcome shade. They sat down, facing out across the clearing, where the crowd had moved swiftly and reseated itself. The man and woman fell into lithe cross-legged postures and gestured. A boy and a girl came forward bearing a tray – crudely fashioned from a platter of wood – bearing nine stone mugs of liquid.

Nine
, Carew thought.

The woman smiled and said softly, “Your companions, in the jungle, must be hot and thirsty too. Do you have the means to communicate with them? I assure you, we mean you no harm.”

Gorley smiled and spoke into his wrist-com, and a short while later Alleghri and Thomas emerged, rather sheepishly, from the jungle and joined the others in the long-house. Carew watched them sit down, their bulk contrasting with the slim-boned colonists.

He saw Lania pull the cuff of her smartsuit over her thumb and surreptitiously dip it into her mug. She nodded to Gorley and mouthed, “Safe.”

The woman said, “Drar. A juice derived from a fruit of the jungle. Very high in vitamins. It is our staple drink.”

Carew lifted the mug and tasted the sweet, viscous liquid. It was not unlike a mixture of banana and orange juice, with a sharp, peppery aftertaste.

“Although this meeting might be unprecedented,” the woman said, “I think the protocol might be to introduce ourselves.”

She was not at all what Carew had expected from colonists who had dwelled in this harsh environment for up to seventy years. Now that his ear had attuned itself to her dialect, he realised that she was eloquent and articulate, her manner at once assured yet placatory. He thought the pair perhaps in their fifties, their tanned faces surprisingly unlined.

“We are an exploratory team from the human Expansion,” Gorley said. “I am Commander Edmund Gorley and my second in command is Director Anish Choudri.” He introduced the rest of the team, and the man and woman smiled to each one in turn.

“You are welcome to World,” said the woman, and the simplicity of the name seemed in keeping with what Carew had seen of these people so far. “I am Leah.”

“And I,” said the man, “am Rahn.”

“We are the Council Elders. We do not rule our people, as such, merely guide. We lead, as you will come to see, a simple life here in the jungle of World. Our every need is assured. We are a happy people.”

Carew wanted to ask her about the beast in the long-house, but thought that perhaps now was not the right time.

Gorley said, “You are descended from the colonists who set out from the Expansion world of Vercors, approximately one hundred standard years ago.” He paused. “I was wondering if you still hold the same beliefs as your ancestors?”

The man replied to this. “Our fathers and mothers came from Vercors, where they followed the way of the Kurishen. We no longer believe what we once believed. Belief, in our experience, is an outgrowth of one’s environment, and as such we have adapted our beliefs to suit the ways of World.”

Gorley said, “Your ancestors came to this system in a ship, following the course of an alien vessel from the sixth planet of this system. We landed there and found it arid, lifeless. I take it that your people, too, found it thus and so moved on.”

The man and the woman merely smiled.

Gorley pressed on, “We found your colony vessel on the moon of this world. We wonder how you came to be here?”

“That, Edmund Gorley,” the woman said, “is a story longer to tell than there are hours remaining in the day. Observe, the sun is dying. Night will soon be upon us. We follow the sun, rising when it rises, sleeping when it sleeps. We have set aside accommodation so that you can spend the night here rather than return to your ship.” She gestured through the open-ended long-house to three neighbouring huts. “In the morning, we will show you around our settlement and attempt to answer your questions.”

Outside, as if at some unspoken command, the crowd rose as one and drifted across the clearing to their huts. Within seconds, the clearing was almost empty; only a few settlers moving towards their dwellings at the far end of the settlement remained in sight.

The man and woman rose, inclined their heads minimally in farewell, and left the long-house.

“Well,” Carew said when they were alone. “What did you make of that?”

“One,” Gorley said, “they said that they were
told
we were coming, which is rather odd. Two, they seem – and this may seem patronising – civilised.”

Carew nodded, loath though he was to agree with the Expansion man. “The same thought occurred to me. I was expecting ignorant jungle dwellers.”

Choudri said, “I’m curious to learn what belief system they adopted which is ‘an outgrowth’ of this environment.”

Outside, the sun was sinking, bringing a rufous twilight to the clearing. In the jungle behind the long-house, the medley of strange birdsong and animal noises that had accompanied the daylight now quietened with the onset of evening.

Gorley said, “We all have blister-tents in our packs, equipped with security alarms. I suggest we sleep in them within the huts they’ve assigned us.” He looked at his watch. “Assemble outside in ten hours?”

They left the long-house and found the guest huts. Carew, Lania and Jed took the first and Carew set up his one-person blister-tent beneath the low, dusty thatch.

He crawled into the tent, undressed and stretched out in the silence of the alien evening. He was thinking about what the woman, Leah, had said about their every need being assured, when Lania called from her tent, “Ed?”

“Mmm?”

“Can’t sleep,” she said. “Tell me a story.”

He smiled. “There was once a starship called
The Paradoxical Poet
, and its crew of three travelled far and wide...”

C
AREW AWOKE SUDDENLY
and wondered where the hell he was.

He rolled onto his back and stared up into the darkness. His eyesight gradually adjusted, and he made out the shadowy curve of his blister-tent above his head, its frame illuminated by the red glow of the security unit.

“I am on a world called World,” he told himself, “the guest of human settlers who seem too good to be true.”

He looked at his wrist-com. It was over an hour before the time Gorley had assigned for their morning assembly, but he had slept solidly and felt wide awake. He dressed quietly and ducked from the blister-tent.

He stood and took a deep breath. He could smell the thatch, a dry pollen-like scent which irritated the back of his throat. He stepped outside, pushing open the loose door, again fashioned from thatch, and found to his surprise that the long clearing was bathed in light.

It was not sunlight, however: the supergiant was still well below the horizon. In its stead, two moons rode low on the western horizon. One, he thought, was the rocky, lifeless moonlet where the
Procyon
had come down, a misshapen gourd beside its companion. The second moon was huge and reflected the red light of the sun, filling the clearing with second-hand illumination like rosé wine.

High overhead, a scatter of strange constellations hung like errant chandeliers, and to the east was the orange-pink mass that was the body of the Devil’s Nebula. He found the stretch of stars that was Vetch space – and beyond it the faint stars of the Expansion. Somewhere out there was the small, G-type star under which he had been born, now Vetch property.

He crossed the clearing towards the escarpment that marked its southward edge. The ground was sandy beneath his feet and his passage kicked up a cloud of fragrant dust. In the starlight, he saw that it settled faster than his senses were accustomed to. It would take some adjusting to the greater gravity here, and not only the odd effect of feeling heavier than usual: objects fell faster than normal, as he had found last night when discarding his clothes – they had seemed to drop as if whisked away by an unseen hand – and now the ground pulled at his boots as if they were magnetised.