Zenn Scarlett (7 page)

Dark Hair gave Red Hat a look, and they both turned back to the hound.

“You’re a little young to be this far from town, aren’t you?” Zenn said. “What are you doing all the way out here, anyway?”

The boys exchanged another look. This one clearly guilty.

“We weren’t doin’ nuthin’,” Red Hat said, not looking at her.

“Yeah, we’re just… foolin’ around.”

Zenn approached Dark Hair, and looked more closely at his dirty face.

“You’re Pelik Shandin’s kid, aren’t you?” she said. “Kellin, right?”

“Yeah…” He seemed unhappy to be identified.

“We were over at the quarry, with Kellin’s dad,” Red Hat said. Pelik Shandin ran the rock quarry on the western outskirts of Arsia. Zenn had been there just last month with Otha when they’d gone to load up on gravel for the pen floors.

“Does Pelik know you’re out here?” Zenn asked. The boys were prevented from answering by a distant, high-pitched keening sound. It was the town’s noon whistle.

“Holy crim-in-oly…” Kellin Shandin said. “Is it lunch already?”

“We gotta get back, fast,” Red Hat said. “Your dad’s gonna yell at us.”

“You’re not supposed to be wandering around, are you?” Zenn said. The boys shook their heads, concern plain on their young faces.

“My dad said we could look around the quarry,” Kellin told her. “But we kinda… kept walkin’. You won’t tell him we were out here, will ya?”

Zenn thought for second.

“Tell you what,” she said, sensing an opportunity. “If you can keep the whalehound a secret, I won’t say anything to your dad. Deal?”

They exchanged a long look. This was obviously a hard bargain. But they had no choice.

“Deal,” Kellin said. “And you won’t tell nobody we… touched that thing, will ya?”

“Hey… we won’t… catch something from it, will we?” Red Hat said, suddenly nervous. He held both hands up to his face and squinted at them. “I mean, they’ve got diseases, right?” Zenn’s heart sank at this. For a moment, it seemed as if this encounter might actually do some good. But no. It was already too late.

“No,” she said. “You won’t get sick. They don’t carry any microbes that affect humans.”

“I’m washing my hands anyway, soon as I get back,” Red Hat said, holding his arms out from his body.

“Me too,” Kellin agreed.

“Fine, but there’s really no need,” Zenn said. “Now, remember our deal. If you don’t say anything, I won’t.”

“Yeah, alright,” Kellin said.

They trotted off, now giving the slumbering hound a wide berth as they went to the bluff and climbed up and out of sight.

“I may speak now?” Hamish said, coming to stand by Zenn. He tilted his head at her. “What the young one said about the Earth-humans’ Authority. Will this Authority come to Mars and abolish alien life forms here as it did on the Earth?”

“I don’t really know, Hamish,” she told him, the thought making her weary. She sat down on the bank of the dry streambed.

“I have never had a clear understanding of the Earth-humans and their feelings against forms of life from other worlds. Their thinking on this issue seems… extreme. Do you have an explanation?”

“I’m no expert on sol sys politics,” Zenn admitted. “But it started about thirty years ago. You ever hear of the Orinoco Event?”

“I have not heard this term. We did not study Earth-human history in my hatchling group’s education.”

“It was a disease outbreak. A pandemic, a sort of super-influenza hybrid, worse than anything seen on Earth before. Started in the jungles of the South Amazonia Prefecture. It spread fast, and killed almost two hundred thousand people in three months. Then it subsided. No cure was ever found. The virus just seemed to dry up and disappear. Everyone thought they were safe, that the threat had passed. After eight months, though, it flared up again. This time, it spread worldwide. Killed over two billion people.”

“This is a terrible toll,” Hamish said. “Such a loss is hard to comprehend.”

“It was hard alright. Pretty much made things fall apart on Earth.”

“Things disintegrated into pieces?”

“Socially, I mean. Governments couldn’t cope. Law and order broke down. Industry and farming, too. Entire countries started starving to death. People took things into their own hands. You can’t blame them. Anyway, the Temporary Executive Authority was formed as a kind of global army. They took charge, and things got better. Slowly. And it wasn’t easy. The Authority was pretty brutal about it. I guess they had to be. It wasn’t a democracy, that’s for sure. You either did things their way, or you were on your own. And people on their own didn’t have much of a life during those years.”

“But what of this Authority’s sense regarding alien life forms? That they should not be tolerated? Other beings in the Accord of Local Systems do not behave in such a way.”

“It was because of the Orinoco Event. The cause of the outbreak was never determined. But that didn’t stop people from making accusations. Some people claimed the virus was a military experiment gone bad. Or that it was bioterrorism cooked up by religious fanatics. But no one had any real proof. In the end, I guess people felt they had to blame someone, anyone. So, they blamed aliens. They said off-worlders brought the virus to Earth with them. After that, all aliens were unclean, contaminated.”

“With no proof whatever?” Hamish seemed genuinely shocked by this. “Are Earth-humans so uninterested in the truth of a thing?”

Zenn wanted to say “Yes, exactly.” But she’d always made an effort to see the issue from the Earth’s point of view. “It was too traumatic. The horror of what happened just made Earthers kind of… crazy. If they said the outbreak came from beyond Earth, they could tell themselves they weren’t responsible.”

“And it is the Authority on Earth that promotes this thinking?”

“Well, yes and no. The Authority was only interested in maintaining some kind of global order. Having aliens as an enemy to focus people’s attention made their job easier. I don’t think they really care one way or another about what caused the Orinoco Event.”

“But are not the Authority’s feelings toward aliens the cause of the Great Rift between Earth and Mars, as well as the other worlds of the Accord?”

“It’s complicated,” Zenn said. “You see, when the Authority came to power, they needed someone to be their muscle.”

“I am assuming this is not bodily tissue you refer to.”

“Right. I mean they needed a group who could carry out their orders when people got out of line. Someone to do their dirty work. The group that became the Authority’s enforcers were the New Law faction. They’re the ones who really, really hate aliens. The Authority just wants to keep power. The New Law wants Earth and the rest of the solar system permanently ‘cleansed’ of aliens.”

“So this New Law is the source of the Earth-humans’ wild and unreasonable dislike of alien life?”

“Well, it turns out it’s not all that unreasonable, from a certain perspective. You see, the New Law had its origins way back before humans knew there was life anywhere but Earth. Back then, some fringe groups were making claims about alien abductions. Gruesome experiments. People being probed by alien creatures. These people were called UFOers. They were also called nuts, because no one believed their stories.”

“Were their stories true?”

“Only in one or two rare cases. The point is, after Earth’s ‘First Contact’ with an alien civilization, the UFOers crowed that they’d been right all along. They claimed they had some secret knowledge that aliens were out there all along. By the time of the Orinoco Event, the UFOers had organized into the New Law faction. And then they said aliens were not only real, but a threat to humanity. A lot of people were ready to believe them. By then, the Authority needed the New Law to help them keep control of things. So when the New Law insisted that Earth cut all contact with other worlds, the Rift was born.”

“But Mars continues on, as does our cloister, despite this Rift?” asked Hamish.

“Well, there are a few big, commercial mining companies making a go of it on Mars, some ag co-ops and half a dozen private groups like the Ciscans. But the Rift has just about strangled the life out of the smaller farms and colonies still hanging on in the valleys. It’s only trade with the planets of the Accord that’s kept Mars alive. Just barely, but alive. And now there are rumors that the Authority might be ready to start up trade again with Mars. That’s what the boys were talking about.”

“But will that New Law segment not object at ending the Rift, if there are aliens on Mars?”

“Like you? And our patients at the cloister?” Zenn said. “Yes. They’d object, alright. But we don’t get much real news from Earth, so we don’t really know what the balance of power is like right now. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

A low, distant rumble could be heard then, echoing off the cliffs from the direction of the cloister.

“Sounds like Otha’s on his way,” Zenn said. She went to the boulder where she’d left the shotgun and picked it up. “Good thing I was armed. Those kids could’ve stolen our whalehound.”

“But why would…” Hamish said. “Ah. You jest with me.”

“Yes. Just kidding,” Zenn said. But she thought then of what might have happened if adult towners, and not those boys, had discovered her and the helpless hound. She hefted the gun in her hands and decided not to pursue that line of thought.

FIVE

Early the next morning Zenn woke to the sound of voices echoing up the stairwell outside her dormitory room. She rose and draped her robe around her shoulders. Katie, curled up in her usual sleeping spot at the head of the bed, looked up and blinked at Zenn.

Zenn made sure the little rikkaset was watching her, then raised her hands and made the sign for “Good morning, Katie.” The rikkaset responded with a luxurious stretch and a yawn that showed off a set of needle-sharp teeth. Then, she sat up on her haunches and, dexterously using her long-fingered, raccoon-like front paws, signed “Katie hungry. Hungry Katie eat?”

Zenn signed back “Yes. Come on,” and Katie hopped down from the bed and followed her out into the hall.

Eleven other doors lined the hallway on this floor, all closed, all the rooms empty, except for Hild’s and Hamish’s. The ground floor held another twelve identical rooms – rooms that once housed paying students.

Hamish’s door opened, and he ambled into view, ducking through the doorway before standing up to his full height. He came down the hall, adjusting his chainmail vest with two claws while grooming one of his antennae with the specially adapted claw on his upper left arm. His straw hat hung down on his back, its leather chinstrap looped around what passed for his neck. Otha had only recently convinced the coleopt to vacate the sleeping burrow he’d dug into the hillside next to the cloister’s physic garden. Her uncle had made it clear to Hamish that he needed to move into the dorm, explaining it simply wasn’t proper for the cloister sexton to live in a hole in the ground. Coleopts only required two to three hours of sleep at night. In order to wake up when everyone else did, Hamish had adjusted his sleep periods so that he went to bed around four in the morning. This let him synchronize his schedule with the waking hours of the cloister’s human residents.

“Good morning, novice Zenn,” he said, his hard hind claws scraping on the floorboards. “Hello, mammal-rikkaset.” He leaned down to pet Katie, but then straightened back up immediately.

“I would stroke the animal. Do I have your approval for this act?”

“Yes, of course,” Zenn smiled up at him. He bent down again, but the rikkaset shied away, hiding behind Zenn’s legs.

“She doesn’t quite know what to make of you.”

“I’m still peculiar and outlandish to her.”

“Here,” Zenn said, picking Katie up and setting her down again between her and the towering insect. “We’ll show you what she’s learned to do. She likes to show off.” Zenn signed, and also spoke the words aloud so Hamish could follow: “Katie, sit.”

Katie sat.

“Very impressive,” Hamish said. “Good mammal.”

“No, no,” Zenn said. “That’s not the trick. Watch.”

She signed and spoke: “Katie?”

The rikkaset’s golden eyes followed Zenn’s hands, keen for whatever was coming. “Katieeee… blend.”

The rikkaset instantly crouched low, froze in position, and stared straight ahead. Then, her violet-and-cream fur began to move. For a second or two, the fur rose and fell in ripples from head to tail, then the rikkaset’s entire body seemed to blur. This slightly out-of-focus Katie-outline now took on the brownish tint of the synthwood flooring beneath her. A second after that, she disappeared.

Hamish started to say something, but Zenn wasn’t finished.

“Katieee… un-blend.”

A spot on the floor before them quivered, the brownish, indistinct shape of a rikkaset reappeared, turned to a vibrating swirl of violet and cream, and then Katie was there again. Her ringed tail whipped back and forth with excitement as Zenn praised her.

“Good Katie. Good girl,” Zenn said. “We’ve been working on blending and appearing again on command. I think she’s got it.”

“I have heard such animals are capable of this. But I have never seen it. How is it accomplished?”

“It’s her fur. It’s refractive.” Hamish shook his big head, not understanding. “That means each hair can re-direct light that hits it, kind of like a bunch of tiny prisms. It’s a defense mechanism, rikkasets evolved it for hiding from predators. There are a couple species of lightshifters, but Smithson’s rikkasets do it best.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Hamish leaned down again to pet Katie. This time she let him draw his grooming-claw through the fur on her back. Then she sat down at Zenn’s feet. “And you have taught her hand-language. She must have an excellent brain.”

Zenn laughed. “Yes, quite the brain. Rikkasets have the mental ability of an Earther chimpanzee.”

Hamish continued stroking Katie, and the rikkaset trilled her pleasure at him.

“We had considerable excitement yesterday, did we not? With the mammal-hound,” he said. “Is the animal alright?”

“He lost a little skin under his chin. Probably scraped it when he went down, after I darted him. Nothing serious.”