Transgalactic (8 page)

“You are not a Squeal person,” the Dorian said, with some difficulty. His vocal chords were not made for squeals.

“I am a human,” Asha replied in Dorian.

“I have never met a human,” the Ambassador said skeptically, switching his short trunk, an appendage that she knew could be a delicate manipulator or a deadly weapon. He was no longer an “it.” Male Dorians were larger than females, and they wore clothing, or at best harnesses, only while traveling. In most circumstances they were naked, and this Dorian clearly was male. “You don't look dangerous.”

“Unlike your species, we were born fighting for existence.”

“And yet,” the Dorian said, “you don't look dangerous. How did you get here?”

“By magic.”

“Dorians don't believe in magic.”

“Operations beyond our ability to understand can only be described as magic.”

“Nothing is beyond Dorian ability to understand.”

“Then you must explain my presence here on this world so dangerously close to the Galactic Center to which no alien other than yourself has arrived.”

“You must have a ship.”

“You would have noted its arrival, and, as you know, none has arrived. So you may explain how I happened to appear in the sacred receptacle at the peak of the fountain.”

“Ah,” the Ambassador said, “you are the Chosen One.”

“So I have been told.”

“From the fountain that the Squeal people, in their primitive theology, believe will produce a savior. The fountain from which nothing has emerged in the history of Galactic contact with Squeal. And, in Squeal history, only Squeal persons—obvious imposters who have dared the night. And in Squeal mythology, only monsters. And you are neither.”

“Maybe a monster. Or a princess. But certainly here by a means that I cannot explain.”

“Then what are you going to explain?” the Ambassador asked.

“Why you are going to lend me a ship to leave this world.”

The Ambassador studied her, as if wavering between amusement at Asha's impertinence and impatience at the waste of his time and the interruption of his sleep. “It would be simpler just to have you killed,” he said, and raised his trunk as if to summon guards.

“That would be a mistake,” Asha said, and focused on not shifting in her stance or allowing any trace of uncertainty to enter her voice.

The silence between them lengthened, as if the Ambassador was waiting for Asha to apologize, take back her request, and then, if he were inclined to be merciful, enjoy a quick and relatively painless execution. “You do not seem insane,” he said finally, “and yet you make these insane statements.”

“If you have me killed,” Asha said steadily, “the Squeal people will turn against you.”

“How would they know?”

“Your Squeal person attendant knows,” Asha said, “and though you could have it killed, no doubt it has awakened its fellow attendants to tell them that the Chosen One has appeared out of the terrible night to see the mighty Ambassador, and though you could have them all killed, you could not be sure that some word has not escaped these walls, and these many deaths could not be explained, and all of this would damage your mission beyond repair.”

“My mission?” the Ambassador demanded. “What does an insignificant human know of my mission?”

“The only possible reason for your presence on this planet is to guide these people into interstellar capability and then to Federation citizenship.”

If a Dorian face could express discouragement, the Ambassador's face might have done so. Perhaps it was indicated by the droop of his trunk. “That is an impossible task,” he said. “They are a frustrating people, perhaps like us Dorians”—he seemed revulsed by his own comparison—“before we are driven from our fertile plains to the mountain city of Grandor. They are too happy, too content with their petty lives, too pleased with their lack of wars and personal strife.”

“And too terrified of the night sky.”

“That, too,” the Ambassador said. “I see no way to succeed.”

“You accept defeat?” Asha asked. “To a Dorian that is suicide. Or worse, disgrace.”

“Yes.”

“That is why you will give me a ship.”

“That is impossible,” the Ambassador said. “My ship is not departing until my mission is completed, and that may not happen in my lifetime.” The last seemed to come with a measure of despair.

“But you could provide a boat with interstellar capability,” Asha said. “The Captain's Barge, perhaps.”

“Remind me why I should do that?”

“Because I will save your mission.”

The Ambassador looked at Asha for a long moment as if wondering how this slender, misshapen creature standing in front of him could presume to accomplish what he could not. “And how do you plan to do that?”

“The Squeal people plan for me to choose one of them for a mate or consort or scapegoat—whatever they have in their mythology. We are supposed to participate in some kind of ceremony in the ancient artifact in the plaza fountain. Instead, you are going to bring the Captain's Barge down to the plaza in the night. I will pick a suitor, but instead of the fountain we will go to the Captain's Barge and depart. That single event, with everyone forced to look at the sky and envision the royal pair ascending into the heavens, will alter the psychology of the Squeal people, provide therapy for their aversion to space, and begin their journey to the stars.”

The Ambassador stared at Asha out of rounded eyes. A stronger scent of methane filled the air.

“And give you great honor,” Asha said.

And that is how Asha found herself, dressed in ceremonial finery, in the entrance of a compact spaceboat, a shivering Squeal person beside her, waving her hands ceremonially toward the plaza filled with Squeal people. She took the four-fingered hand of the Squeal person beside her, now with fully developed male genitalia hidden under finery equal to her own, and turned to enter the ship.

The Squeal person was the third suitor, who had at least some clue as to how to court a stranger from the magical artifact. She didn't know what she was going to do with him.

But she would think of something.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

Riley felt a movement behind him and heard the rasp of breath that wasn't his. He turned. Behind him was Rory, shivering with terror, his red eyes wide and flickering from side to side. It looked ridiculous for a dinosaur, but Riley understood it, and understood the courage it took for Rory to follow him through a magical doorway into this demonic artifact. But all that didn't change the impossibility of the situation.

“Go back!” Riley said in his pidgin dinosaur vocabulary.

Rory moved his head. Riley didn't know whether that was a refusal or an involuntary twitch, but Rory didn't turn or retreat.

“Go!” Riley repeated. “Leave!”

Rory still did not move. Finally he spoke. “I must do this.” His roar had a plaintive restraint.

“You can't! There is no way!”

“I must do this for my people.”

“Whatever you think you're doing,” Riley said in his own language, “you won't make it work.” And then in Rory-ese, “Not work.”

Rory burst forth with a series of roars that Riley had difficulty understanding. There were various modulations and variations that he had never heard before and perhaps would never hear again, but he guessed at something like: “My people must regain their ancient glory, those great days when they built this city and built the pyramid that contains the sacred remains of the ancestor who became a god, and they must bring back those days when the gods walked among us. You and this terrifying object are our only hope. When I first saw you descending from the pyramid, I knew you were a god—perhaps our great ancestor reborn—and I knew you were our hope to save us from savagery and decay.” Or maybe, Riley thought, these were only the words he might have said if he had been Rory.

When Rory stopped, Riley looked at the dangerous, pitiful creature before him, and said, “I didn't get all that, but I know one thing: I am not a god. I can't bring back the gods or the long-past days of glory. Your ancestors killed the gods who made this ship. Who walked among you. They aren't coming back.”

“We killed the gods,” Rory said, as if accepting the ancestral guilt of actions a million long-cycles ago, like Christians accepting the sin of Adam's fall, “but we have suffered enough.”

“You are right: Your people have suffered enough. But you must go back where you belong! Now you know what you can do if you conquer your fears. You can lead your people back to the good days. If you don't leave, you will never return to your people. Once I get where I am going, if I can figure out how this ship works and make it work again—unlikely as that might be—you can't come back. You will die here in this terrifying place. And I may die with you.” Riley had his own version of “terrifying.”

Even in the low-probability of this ancient artifact still functioning and the even-lower probability that he could find a way to make it operate again as a ship, Riley thought about sharing the inside of this red sphere with Rory, and imagined grim scenarios. Space is endless and empty and finding a path through it is fraught with perils, but sharing it with a hungry carnivore was worse. He was in a strange vessel whose food supply, if it had one that could provide substances suitable for an alien species, was a million long-cycles old. As was its fuel, whatever it was. And even if it manufactured or created food from inorganic materials that did not decay, would it be a kind that a carnivorous predator would consider food? When something far more satisfying was continuously available?

Even a well-intentioned dinosaur might not be able to resist. “You must go!” Riley said again.

Rory had stopped shivering. His red eyes were focused on Riley. He bared his jaw full of predator's teeth. He roared.

“I take that as a ‘no,'” Riley said and turned to the ship, which had been shifting around him during his efforts to convince Rory he had made a fatal mistake. He made a mental note not to argue with a dinosaur.

*   *   *

What he expected to see was passageways and compartments, but instead there were walls flowing like heavy cream poured from a pitcher. Or more like blood. The inside of the ship, like the outside, was ruby red. The shifting interior was some kind of Transcendental magic, some advanced technology that could switch between plasticity and impermeability, some quasi-intelligent material that could sense the shape and dimensions of the creatures within it—perhaps when he had stepped through the permeable entrance—and adapt to their needs.

As welcome as that development might be—it suggested that the ship might also be able to adapt its other functions to satisfy his, and Rory's, need for food and his need to control the ship—it also was a disappointment. He would not find here any clues to the nature of the Transcendental Machine creators, nor, probably, any record of their civilization or their intentions. They had made their protean ship too well. In creating a one-shape-fits-all vessel, they had erased their own identity.

At least he had their technology, Riley thought, and if he could get it to civilized space it might prove the greatest discovery ever. If he could get it there.

*   *   *

He was surrounded, almost enveloped, in flowing red walls, and he hoped that Rory was color blind or, at least, that his eating-reflex was not turned on by color. As Riley moved toward a churning wall, the floor became solid and smooth under his feet. The wall took shape as he approached, opening a doorway for him into unformed space beyond. The passageway, if that was what it was, was not the familiar architecture of human, or even Galactic Federation, ships. Not square, but functional, with rounded corners. They seemed to adjust to his movements, shaping themselves as he moved toward and into them. The walls felt solid, but he had the feeling they might collapse in on him at any moment.

After a few steps a compartment materialized. At first it was bare walls, shimmering into existence, then, as Riley entered, a pallet extruded from the far wall and, from an adjacent wall, a basin without a drain. If he placed his hands in the basin Riley wondered if it would fill with fluid, water perhaps, or sonic waves to clean them, or perhaps some spigot would emerge above the basin and perhaps a drain below, or maybe the fluid would disappear into the wall as magically as the basin had materialized. The red sphere was like some fairy-tale cottage enchanted to make wishes come true, only here the wishes did not have to be expressed or even conceived; they were anticipated. And as he was thinking these thoughts a kind of stool emerged from the floor like a mushroom in the forest, with a central opening suggesting a disposal system for excretions. From the center of the floor a flat surface grew on a stalk to become a table and beside it a stool with a seat like a misshapen saddle.

His bodily requirements had apparently been assessed and met. But there was, as yet, no source of food or drink, and no control room. Riley looked behind him. Rory had followed and was standing, wide-eyed, as if frozen into immobility by the shaping of the compartment and the emergence of its furnishings. Perhaps, Riley thought, when Rory preceded him or moved on his own, the compartment, or one like it, would adjust to his needs. Or maybe Rory would have to adapt to the ship's analysis of Riley's requirements, as the first to enter. He wondered what Rory would make of the commode. No matter. Rory had coped with more difficulties than these in his risk-filled life.

Riley moved through the compartment and the far wall opened in front of him as the pallet was absorbed. A short corridor beyond, another compartment opened. There, as he watched, a window framed itself in an adjacent wall and another table grew from the floor. Riley walked to the window. It was more like a cupboard, an empty space opening into blackness. Riley waved his hands in front of it and, when that had no effect, inserted one tentative finger into the dark space. Glowing spots appeared, as if hanging in space. When his finger encountered no resistance or sensation, he inserted his other fingers and then his entire right hand. The spots glowed brighter, and as he moved his hand among them the ones he approached grew brighter while the others dimmed. Clearly this was some kind of selection process, but of what he didn't yet know, and one that might take some exploration before he proceeded further. There were, as well, some odors that wafted to him that he distinguished from the Rory's fetid breath—odors that might be emitted by food, if the word “food” was granted a broad elasticity. Perhaps this window/cupboard was the food source he needed, if he could figure out how to make it work.