City of Pearl Read online

  GRAHAM WILEY, speaking on “Science and You,”

  BBChan 5682,

  April 30, 2299

  Eddie Michallat didn’t care for Graham Wiley. Wiley was a broadcasting Brahmin, a professor who had the prime science correspondent slot across thirty Web channels. He treated Eddie like a tabloid hack, because, Eddie believed, he didn’t regard his Master’s in anthropology as serious scientific credentials. It was rare they came this close physically in real life, but this was an important news conference. Everyone worth a byline in the journalistic community was there.

  Tech came and tech went, and the dissemination of information and opinion could take place a hundred different ways, delivered straight to the brain and optic nerve of the audience in many cases. But a news conference required flesh-and-blood attendance, because only flesh could enjoy the food and wine laid on afterwards. Eddie was glad there was some respect left for tradition.

  “I put in for the docco assignment they’re advertising on the Ariel staffnet,” he said, by way of a throwaway remark to Wiley. “To Cavanagh’s Star.”

  Wiley, affecting professorial tweeds today, gave him a sympathetic look all the way down his nose. “Well, someone had to.”

  “Could be some extraordinary stuff at the end of that.”

  “Could be 150 years out of circulation for nothing, too.”

  “Okay, what if the planets around Cavanagh’s Star really are habitable long-term? What if the colony made it after all? I’d say that’s one great story.”

  Wiley, gazing up and down the rows of hotel seating in the conference room, said nothing and stayed saying nothing for an irritatingly long time. To a journalist it was the equivalent of a gunslingers’ standoff, and Eddie’s metaphorical hand hovered over his verbal gun. Suddenly he didn’t care anymore and filled in the silence the ex- professor had dug hole-deep before him.

  “Whatever you say, I’m still interested,” he said. “I still think it’s the most important mission in the history of the space program. The network wouldn’t be contributing so much to the cost if it weren’t. I’m going.”

  Wiley blew out a long silent breath through pursed lips. “It’s living death,” he said. “Living death. Now, where’s that bloody lunch?” He looked round impatiently for signs of the caterers moving in with trolleys of delights. “You don’t know what audience you’ll have in twenty-five years when the signal starts reaching Earth. Or even which network. All you need is yet another damn planet being detected after you’ve left and you’ve wasted your time.”

  “I thought you’d express some concern about my leaving my nearest and dearest.”

  “I didn’t think you had any.”

  You bastard. “I don’t. The mission’s restricted to singlestatus personnel.”

  “Well, then, I’m sure it’ll be time well spent for you.”

  It was a very tedious news conference after that. Eddie left before the buffet lunch was served.

  He found himself getting angry only when he was halfway through his supper in his favorite restaurant. He hated that habit. He suspected the internal replay of he said, I said that was running before his unfocused eyes while he ate was evident to other diners. Perhaps he was even moving his lips. He snatched the wineglass up to his mouth just to make sure he wasn’t talking out loud.

  Smug little shit, Wiley. He might have been making his money in punditry, dismissing exploration, but he might still be around in twenty-five years when Eddie filed his first reports, and that would show him. This was real drama. There were lost tribes and big business and a new Earth. All right, it was roughly the 67,450th planet detected, but the people factor was immense. It was absolutely logical that he should go, and observe, and report, even if nobody ever got to hear his words. He couldn’t believe that instinct wasn’t hardwired into everyone somewhere.

  After all, facing the unknown hadn’t ever deterred the first explorers, had it? How was he different from the Vikings setting off across the uncharted Atlantic, worried about getting close to the edge of the world? On the other hand, perhaps he already knew too much, perhaps more than the sailors of the past had ever created in their imaginations. He knew that even if his journey took months or years, the world left behind him would be aging far faster. Living death, as Wiley had said.

  Eddie suddenly found swallowing was hard work. He had always thought phrases like “chill of fear” and “cold anxiety” were clichés, and not ones he would lower himself professionally to use, but that was precisely what went through him at that point—cold. He reassured himself it was the by-product of epinephrine. It was just his body pumping out hormones to prepare him to deal successfully with a stressor. That was all it was, blind physiology, not prophecy, not premonition, not at all. He repeated it to himself over and over.

  And he was still cold. But he was still going.

  3

  One day as Honi the Circle-Drawer was walking along the road, he saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked him, “How long will it take this tree to bear fruit?” The man replied, “Seventy years.” Honi asked, “Do you expect to live another seventy years to eat its fruit?” The man replied, “I did not find the world without carob trees when I entered it; as my forebears planted for me, so I am planting for those who come after me.”

  Talmud Ta’anit 23a

  First snows, 2374.

  It was a hard walk back to Constantine for humans. Aras was mindful of their little legs and their poor stamina, and kept pausing to allow Josh to keep up. The snow grabbed at them and hid obstacles. But it had a clean silence about it, and it reminded Aras of home, the plain of Baral in Wess’ej, which he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  “You’re sure they’re coming?” Josh asked. He puffed little clouds before him. “You’re sure it’s a human ship?”

  “Yes. It’s not isenj, it’s not ours, and the markings resemble yours.”

  “We don’t want them here.”

  “We haven’t made contact yet. At their speed, they’ll pass here next season. There’s time to discuss this.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “I could prevent it landing.”

  “No, no more killing.”

  “My duty is to maintain the balance here. You know I will, if I have to.” Aras felt it was well to remind Josh that however much he regretted his own military past, no amount of exposure to human morality would prevent him doing his duty again. The past was not the present. It was foolish to forget history; but remembering would not change what needed to be done, only how he would feel about it.

  Josh reeked of agitated embarrassment. Aras wondered if he did, after all, regard him as a monster for eradicating the isenj from the planet, even though Josh said he understood those had been difficult times. It was as if every mention of the massacre—centuries past, in local reckoning as well as in human years—caused him pain. Aras had moved beyond that. Josh’s ancestor had forgiven him; forgiveness had been the first human concept he truly understood, even before his body started assimilating human genes and their attendant behavior. He could not change the past; he could only regret it and strive to change the future. That was forgiveness, he thought.

  Josh looked up. If he could see anything, the incoming ship would be only an abnormally bright star. “Perhaps we could avoid them,” he said, a child’s frightened hope breaking through his usually steady voice.

  “They’re on a direct course. They’re coming here, and it’s likely they will land unless I prevent them. If they’re coming, they’re coming to see you. Don’t you want to see your own kind again?”

  Josh paused and bent over, hands braced on knees, panting. Aras waited for him to recover his breath. He straightened up.

  “We had little in common with them when my people left,” he said. “And how much will we have in common after all these years? Even less. You probably know that.”

  Aras thought briefly of the colony’s archives. Yes, he knew what the seculars were like. He also knew what the God-w
orshipers of all kinds were like, too, and most of them were no better, indistinguishable except for their funny little rituals. Josh and his people at least tried to be different.

  “No, I don’t think this other human society is compatible with yours,” Aras said. “But this isn’t society. It’s just a ship. A few people.”

  They waded on in silence. Eventually the snow became more shallow, and Aras felt level ground beneath it, and knew they were nearly at the compound.

  Josh was silent. Aras could not tell whether he was out of breath or in the grip of anxiety, because the stinging aroma of the man’s eucalyptus oil salve overwhelmed his sense of smell. They crunched above the main street, passing over knee-high roofs clear of snow from which glowed the faint warm light of homes. Over the decades Aras had always wondered what truly went on in the buried village when he wasn’t there. He had visited humans but he suspected, knew, that they switched into another state when he entered the room, and that he would never see them behaving naturally. They urged their children to behave and offered him their finest foods when what he really wanted was to wander in, barely acknowledged, and merge in with the family.

  But he was two meters tall, inhuman and clawed. And every generation took their time getting used to him.

  Humans were the only family he would ever know now. He would accept whatever degree of belonging they could offer him. Wess’har society had no place for a male who could not be allowed to mate.

  “I’ll call the other council members and we’ll meet in the church,” Josh said. “This isn’t a decision I can make alone. You’ll attend, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” Aras said. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Sometimes I feel we run to you like children each time there’s a problem.”

  “I have nothing more urgent,” Aras said. He meant it literally: the welfare of this colony, the balance of this world, were his calling. But Josh smiled, as if he’d cracked a joke.

  “We’ll find a solution,” Josh said.

  GOVERNMENT WORK IS GOD’S WORK

  Underground, deep in the heart of Constantine, Aras glanced at the inscription set in the wall of St Francis Church. It was his most vivid memory of the coming of humans, and it had taken him years to begin to grasp its meaning. The saying had originally been the boast of European colonial invaders subduing what seemed to them a less advanced culture. Now it was the earnest wish of a band of idealists struggling to survive so far from home that few of them could even write down the distance in their notation.

  Using power intelligently did indeed require a superior being. He had to admit that. The council—mainly male, which still baffled Aras—settled round a table near the altar and looked up at him as if they expected a momentous statement. They were afraid: he could smell, see and hear it. They fidgeted. They gave off pungent acid scents as they shifted position. All their muscles, from shoulders to throat, were tense, forcing their voices a little higher.

  “They are coming here, right?” said Martin Tyndale.

  “Oh yes. It’s a ship with cargo space and little armament.” For Aras, a trifle; for them, a potential disaster. “You have little to fear.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The monitor took readings through the hull. There are few people on board, and they’re not conscious. I would say they’re either intending to stop en route to another planet, where they have items to collect, or they’re planning to collect something here to fill those cargo spaces. It’s hard to tell when there’s no voice traffic.”

  Martin didn’t look reassured. “Perhaps they think we need rescuing. We should never have sent the message.”

  “We haven’t asked for help,” Josh said. “We’ve refused all attempts at contact. I’m afraid they’ve probably come to collect material with a view to exploiting the planet.”

  “Then I’ll turn them back.” Aras knew the rest of the colonists’ sensitivities well enough to avoid explaining how. It was a subject they didn’t discuss. “There are questions you should ask yourselves. What could they do to you if they were allowed to land? They could infect you with pathogens. They could introduce a way of life you don’t like. They could try to exploit the planet, and even encourage others to try to come here. You know I won’t allow that. So we will deal with it accordingly.”

  Josh appeared reassured. “Then we evaluate their mission and take it from there.”

  “That’s sensible. It gives us an opportunity to see if they are an isolated group or the vanguard of something more serious. And we need to know what they are capable of doing.”

  Aras wondered sometimes why the humans bothered to gather a group to make decisions, because when matters were serious, they looked to him, and they never put it to the vote. Maybe, when he wasn’t there, they dissented among themselves and had to count heads to reach a decision. But whenever he made a suggestion, it became the only course of action.

  He wondered how they would have reacted if he had told them the safest option was to destroy the sleeping ship before it reached them. He looked round at their faces. They were all worry and fear, and—he sniffed discreetly—a little excitement.

  “If I’m wrong,” Aras said, slowly, “and they offer violence…will you fight?”

  The waft of urgency began to take on a stronger, denser scent. “We’ll defend ourselves and our work,” said Luke Guillot. “And if that means fighting, yes.”

  Josh was nodding. “We’re prepared for any test God sends.”

  Aras had lived among humans for six generations, and he still found some of their ethics inconsistent. If you were prepared to kill, then why not kill when you not only had an advantage, but your target would know nothing about it? What was the point in letting the situation develop into far more messy conflict? Why was it more honorable to look your victim in the face?

  It was no trouble to him, either way. He decided to let them have their way. Besides, he was anxious to see how the other species of human, the Godless, shaped up. It was intelligence worth gathering.

  4

  Who knew how long the bezeri had been trying to signal to us? We saw the lights, but we failed to understand. And then we saw the bodies and the podships drying on the beaches when the bezeri volunteers died to get our attention. We had no plans to stay on their world, but we spent years trying to chart their language of lights. And then the isenj came, and bred, and we finally understood the bezeri when they said: “Help us.”

  SIYYAS BUR,

  Historian Matriarch

  The matriarch Mestin might have had authority to make decisions for her clan stationed here on Bezer’ej, but Aras needed approval from a wider group of isan’ve to justify what he had planned. He didn’t like using the long-range link. It attracted the isenj’s attention, which concerned him even though their reactions and furies were less than nothing to him now.

  He had time to travel back to Wess’ej before the human ship was in range. Perhaps these were things that needed to be conducted face-to-face. But that meant exposing himself to the curiosity of normal wess’har, and right now that was something he didn’t feel inclined to do. It was hard to be different, to be a genuine alien among your own kind. He settled for the long-range communications net and asked for an audience with the isan’ve, the matriarch of F’nar, whose opinions on off-world policy seemed to carry most weight across Wess’ej.

  “I believe we should let the humans land, or at least some of them,” he said to the void in the cockpit of his grounded craft. The vessel seldom flew, but he preferred to live in it or in Constantine rather than in the Temporary City. “There aren’t very many and they aren’t well armed, as far as the drones can tell. We need as much intelligence as we can gather to prepare us for future incursions.”

  “That seems reasonable.” Mestin’s cousin-by-mating, Fersanye, had her clan’s genetic pragmatism as well as its feral looks. “I find it surprising that humans share so little in motivation.”

  “Perhaps it’s beca
use they don’t mix their bloodlines as much as we do. Either way, the species of human that’s coming is as much of a potential threat as the isenj, and even if this mission fails, Joshua believes more will come in the future.”

  “What are our options?”

  “To get to know them and then decide if they’re potential allies.”

  “If they have long-range military ambitions, we’ll be stretched very thin handling enemies on two fronts.”

  “Perhaps. Let me meet them and see.”

  “We were lucky with the first humans. We might be lucky again.” Fersanye’s tone indicated she thought it was a genuine possibility. “I still think we might have made a mistake in letting the colony send a transmission.”

  “Not the first mistake I’ve made, I expect.” Sarcasm was another human habit Aras had picked up, and it still went unnoticed by the average literal wess’har. Fersanye nodded as if she were accepting an apology. “But if the colony had been allowed to die, how many innocent species would have died in their cryo stores?”

  “You made the best decision you could at the time,” Fersanye said. “You always have. Now is a different time. Let us learn.”

  Aras closed the link. Fersanye would never have thought he needed forgiveness for killing isenj civilians. She was wess’har, unburdened by rules of engagement, by the differences between legitimate targets and civilians, by fear of causing offense. He had been wess’har once, too. These days he wondered what he was.