City of Pearl Read online

  There are nonhumans involved.

  Her surprise must have shown on her face, because Lindsay spoke.

  “Are you all right, Superintendent?”

  “Just thinking.” No, it wasn’t quite the time to mention aliens. She’d have to understand more herself before she could do that. “Trust me. I’m as motivated as you are to make sure we don’t land the hard way.”

  Bennett glanced at her briefly and then at Lindsay. If he was looking for a reaction from his CO, he didn’t get one. It couldn’t have been easy for them. Shan couldn’t imagine any military personnel being reassured to wake up from chill-sleep to find that they were answering to a copper, a copper they didn’t know, a copper who was so far out of her depth right now that she almost didn’t care if her numb fear showed on her face.

  Apparently it didn’t. Bennett gave her a quick smile and went back to repeating his mantra.

  Something mentally tapped her on the shoulder and reminded her she had a job to do. The SB whispered that doing this job would put something right.

  Whatever it was, it was something she had wanted to put right for a long, long time. The fear retreated.

  Josh Garrod flinched in his seat as if someone had let off a charge behind him.

  “Constantine, Constantine, this is European Federal Ship Thetis, repeat this is Thetis.”

  The voice was male; the accent was odd, and some of the words were unclear, but it was understandable. It didn’t sound as if they were used to communicating by voice. The speaker didn’t have the throwaway tone Josh had become accustomed to through entertainment videos.

  “We are Constantine,” Josh said carefully. “Why are you here?”

  “Request permission to land our party, sir. We have a systems failure, we’re unable to maneuver and we’re not sure if we can sustain life-support.”

  Land? Could they bring that monster down here? Josh had never made a decision like this in his life. There was no emergency to force him back to instinct and no time to discuss the matter sensibly. He glanced at Aras, who mouthed “quarantine” at him. It helped bring him back to plan.

  “We need to discuss quarantine arrangements—we’ve been isolated from terrestrial bacteria for generations. Wait and we will contact you shortly.”

  He broke contact and turned to the wess’har. His heart was pounding and he felt sick.

  “What now, Aras?”

  “Allow them to send down an atmosphere-capable vessel. They’ll have at least one. Insist that they bring a blood sample from each crew member so we can screen for pathogens, and that just one representative lands to discuss the next step.”

  Josh wrote it down carefully on a coarse sheet of hemp paper. If he could see it, he could do it. “Is their ship really damaged?”

  “The sentry is programmed to neutralize any system it detects that appears redundant to life-support. They shouldn’t be in any danger. Or present any.”

  “This isn’t what we intended.”

  “Josh,” Aras said soothingly. “If they present any threat whatsoever, I’ll remove them. I have to. It won’t be your decision or your responsibility, and you need not fear them.”

  Aras could make anyone believe. A slight rumbling, like a cat’s purr but nearer the boundary of hearing, swept away all fear. Josh felt his shoulders relax and his voice returning to normal. He could swallow. He pressed the button.

  “Thetis, this is Constantine,” he said. “Thetis, I have instructions for you. Please follow them.”

  “Are you sure you can handle it?” Bennett asked, floating at the hatch of the shuttle.

  Shan checked the panel. The biohaz suit creaked as she leaned forward against the restraints. “No.”

  “I could come along.”

  “Wouldn’t look good, disregarding their first instruction, would it?” She tightened the restraints round her and gave him a thumbs-up. “Let’s trust the automation and South American workmanship.”

  Her last view of Adrian Bennett was his worried face as he swung the hatch shut and the automatic locks took over. There was a small cut on his chin where he had shaved the old-fashioned way. If she died, she thought, it would be a banal image to take with her. She had always imagined her last sight would be a spray of small-arms fire or at least a half-decent sunset. She decided to trust the mechanics anyway.

  Silence surrounded her, pressing on her eardrums. She hoped the onboard AI could fly the thing: trusting its piloting skills was worse than the SB. She kept her eyes shut from the time the small vessel shuddered out of the launch bay to the time she felt the vibration stop.

  She opened them again. The viewplate was full of a blue-and-white planet at an angle that made her feel as if she were falling forward, and instinct made her raise her arms in front of her to take the fall that never came. She felt sick. It was only concentrating on the fact that Perault’s briefing was unfolding on schedule within her that stopped her stomach yielding to the inevitable.

  The planet beneath resolved into finer detail, fast and overwhelming. She was dropping towards an island in a clear turquoise sea.

  The cryo panel went dead. The biosignals of the sleeping crew and team were still within safe margins, but there was no indication that the systems were intact.

  “Here we go,” said Bennett. “That’s all we need.”

  “Have we lost cryo?”

  “Possibly. We have to assume we have.”

  “Okay. Frankland or not, we have to revive them. Let’s do it.”

  Bennett tried the manual override and waited. It was a long five seconds. Then the alarm on the biosigns panel turned amber. “I’ll go and lift the lids,” he said. “They’ll be conscious in a few minutes.”

  It was all turning into a cock-up. Lindsay could feel it. She braced herself against the bulkhead and let the wave of nausea peak and subside. She could hear the buzz of conversation in the aft section. At least three of the research team had revived fully, and she decided that if she didn’t imprint favorably upon them now, she would never have any sway over them. She pulled herself through the hatch and tried to float down to a steady position.

  “What’s happening?” It was Mohan Rayat, the pharmacologist. He kept shaking his hand as if it had gone numb.

  “Frankland’s gone down to the surface to make formal contact,” Lindsay said. He’s just a rating. Think of him as a rating. Don’t weaken. “You’re only awake as a precaution in case of cryo failure. We’re experiencing some technical problems.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Frankland has the situation in hand.”

  “And who’s he?”

  “She. Superintendent Frankland is from EnHaz and acting as an officer of the Foreign Office’s Ethics Division. She’s overseeing this mission.”

  “Police? What the hell’s all that about?”

  “She was embarked after your cryo. Political matter. Don’t worry about it. She’s here to maintain proper procedures in acquisition of novel substances and processes.” Well, that much was true. Or at least that was what it said in the file. “You know how it is.”

  Rayat looked as if he was going to protest but as his lips formed a word, his face paled a little. That was no mean effort in zero gee, with his blood patiently distributing itself fairly round his system. Then his cheeks bulged and he made a fast turn—too fast—to grab a sick-bag. Lindsay heaved herself up through the hatch and let his two colleagues deal with the gently drifting rain of vomit. It was only liquid nutrient, after all.

  Back in the forward section of Thetis, the EEWC was conscious and checking suits and weapons. The small space seemed full of them; Barencoin, Becken, Webster, Chahal, and Qureshi. They seemed okay. They said ma’am, and saluted minimally: at least they had been trained not to bounce off the bulkheads.

  “Everybody up, then, ma’am?”

  “Some of them,” Lindsay said. “It goes without saying that this is turning into a lash-up. Frankland didn’t want them revived until she’d secured an agreement
with the colony. That means we’ll have to keep them occupied until she says we can disembark.”

  “I still think we should have sent the sarge down with her,” said Barencoin.

  Bennett shrugged. “She can cope. No point pushing the quarantine. Anyway, they have access to kit that can stop this ship, so better to defer to them at the moment.”

  “It’s not her safety I’m worried about.” Barencoin clenched and unclenched his fist and looked at his palm and the inside of his arm. His face was illuminated by the glow from the bioscreen that was part of his skin. “Have we all got synchrony here?”

  Lindsay checked her own palm at the same time as the three remaining marines and saw seven comm lines—her own plus each member of her unit—pulsing on idle above the panel that creased and flexed as she twitched her fingers. It was a spin-off of leisure technology. You could have a living display screen grown into your skin, anywhere you wanted, any size, any shape, as long as you had enough body and money; and while it was senseless fun for the well-off, it was unbreakable, totally portable comms and data tech for the military. She just hoped it worked. “Yes, got you all,” Lindsay said, and the others said, “Check.”

  “No civvie superintendent,” said Barencoin. “Not wired?”

  Lindsay shook her head. “Couldn’t pick up anything from her at all. Not chipped, I assume. The bioscreen would have clocked something if she’d had ID implanted.”

  “Do we know anything about her?”

  “Only that she wants a Pagan rite if we have to dispose of her body before we get back home.”

  Bennett tightened his webbing. “And she carries a 9mm handgun. Saw the outline, back of her waistband. Old but efficient tech. And a swiss.”

  Lindsay felt a little shiver of uncertainty. “So she’s Pagan, armed and gets paid too much.”

  “What’s a swiss?” said Barencoin.

  “Very old, very valuable. A cylinder about as long as your hand, and it’s got all these parts that fold out of it—blades, adapters, data storage, netlinks, ultrasound probe, you name it. And a dinky little display screen that pops up in a frame.”

  Barencoin simply raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Antiques used casually prompted a little suspicion in the ranks. Everything they carried or wore was disposable, thin film, quick dry, organic tech, recyclable. Unnecessary luxury smacked of old money and wardroom snobbery.

  But the handgun wasn’t a toy. Lindsay doubted if Frankland wore it as a fashion accessory. There was something about the woman, even in her slightly unsteady post-thaw state, that suggested people normally didn’t answer her knock on the door willingly. Lindsay swallowed back another wave of nausea: she’d have to get that medic Hugel to prescribe something for that.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get to it. We’ve got a planet to secure.”

  5

  Planting plan, years one through five.

  Primary crops, seed: wheat, rice, oat, barley, quinoa, sorghum; primary crops, legumes: soy, broad bean, kidney bean, haricots, carlin pea, mung bean; primary crops, tuber: potato Charlotte, potato Desiree, sweet potato, Jerusalem artichoke; vegetables: lettuce, kale, onion, leek, garlic, tomato, mushroom, cucumber, carrot, parsnip, beet; primary crops, fruit: apple, raspberry, blueberry, grape (black muscat, Huxelrebe), lemon. In the event of crop failure, any appropriate plant from the secondary list may be substituted, depending on local conditions. Until grape vines are established, it is permitted to use other fruits or vegetables to make communion wine.

  Constantine Mission,

  agricultural planning document

  Shan waited by the shuttle. The sky burned turquoise; the air ticked and burbled with unseen creatures. In a biohaz suit, the beautiful day was just a curse of trickling sweat in places she couldn’t reach. She was close to ripping the hood off, filter and all, and letting any pathogens try their luck. It seemed a reasonable price to pay for a good scratch.

  But caution prevailed. She visualized not feeling the itches. She concentrated on what appeared to be trees and for a moment the vivid autumnal reds and golds distracted her from the misery of the suit.

  She kept herself fixed on the immediate diplomatic task at hand by rehearsing greetings and pleasantries until movement caught her eye. It was a small, battered allterrain vehicle, growing larger and larger against the amber backdrop. It drew up to her, whirring like an antique friction toy.

  A man in late middle age looked her up and down with complete indifference and indicated the passenger seat. She switched off her comms link to avoid interruption.

  “Welcome, Commander,” he said. It was the style of English she’d heard over the comms system, not so very different from her own, but oddly accented, every syllable clear and separate from the next. “Get in.”

  “Superintendent Shan Frankland. Police—EnHaz division. I’m not the military.”

  “Superintendent,” he said, as if testing the sound of it. He tapped his chest. “Sam.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Sam. We thought you were all dead.”

  Sam looked unmoved. “You were wrong.”

  She handed him the container of blood samples from the crew and eased herself into the cab, aware that the suit’s fabric was making obscene noises against the seat cover. “Now this is what I call a perfect autumn day,” she said.

  Sam’s eyes never left the track ahead. “It’s spring.”

  “Spring’s supposed to be green.” She attempted to break Sam out of the monosyllabic rut. “And light green at that.”

  “Anthocyanins,” he said. His accent fascinated her, and she had to steel herself against mimicking him, slipping breaths and vowels between every consonant. His shapeless tunic and pants were all of the same buff material. “I’ll drop the samples off first and then I’ll take you to see Josh Garrod. He’s getting ready for the holiday, so he’s busy.”

  “Holiday?” she asked. Don’t put yourself out, I’ve only been on the road for a few decades. Discretion prevailed again. This was not an interrogation. “What holiday?”

  “Christmas,” he said, emphasizing both syllables as if it were a foreign language. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

  The autumnal landscape was alien enough, but Christmas in spring jerked her back out of what little familiarity she was beginning to establish. “Still sticking to the old calendar?”

  “Yes. It’s slipped out of sync with this place over the years.”

  “I don’t suppose you thought of tying it in with the natural cycle.”

  “You want to work a nine-day week?”

  “I’m not sure I’m even ready for the thirty-hour day.”

  “Some things we can’t reorder. Besides, the Lord labored for six days and on the seventh He rested. You’ll be glad of that.”

  All the way along the route to Constantine, the fresh foliage on the huge cycad-like plants was hot with cyanide compounds. She would have liked to pause and wander among the ridged orange trunks. But she made a mental note to travel this road again in her own time. The cycads thinned out one by one, and they were suddenly on a plain of shimmering gentian blue. Her monkey-brain tried hard to put familiar labels on the utterly alien, telling her heather, bluebells, lavender. But it was nothing of the sort. The flying creatures she could see skimming the vegetation weren’t birds; and the odd opalescent patches that flared up behind them defied any classification.

  Sam drove on in silence. Around them, the plain gave way to gently rolling hills carpeted with what looked like gray ferns. Shan wondered why he wasn’t staring at her, or at least showing some sign of curiosity at seeing someone from another world. But he kept his eyes ahead of him as if she were regular cargo, nothing especially noteworthy. It occurred to her that he might be trying to avoid getting into conversation with an outsider.

  “Here we are,” he said, and began slowing the ATV.

  She couldn’t see anything resembling a settlement. The vegetation had become sparse and silver, but that was all. Sam steered the vehicle slowly,
as if he were negotiating invisible obstacles, and then the track dipped and enveloped them, and they were suddenly driving down a tunnel with a brilliant white light at the end. It blinded her. She couldn’t help thinking how much it looked like a neardeath experience.

  They were underground.

  “We park here,” Sam said. “No vehicles beyond this point.”

  He jumped down from the ATV and let her struggle out of the cab unaided. She stared around her; her eyes adjusted to the light and she realized she was standing in a large vaulted chamber like the cellars of a vineyard. There was a patch of bright bluish light at the far end, and Sam was walking towards it. She followed him.

  “Josh is in the church,” Sam said suddenly, and it made her start. “Have you ever been in a church?”

  “No,” Shan said. It wasn’t strictly true: she’d visited churches as architecture. She’d walked through the flooded ruins of Chichester cathedral. But she knew that wasn’t what he meant. “I’m a Pagan.”

  Sam paused noticeably. “I’ll take you there first, then.”

  The pool of light at the end of the vault turned out to be a doorway, and she stepped through it into a vision of long-destroyed Petra. The settlement was carved out of the rock, Nabataean style.

  Terraces of buildings stretched out on either side of her, but instead of the gloom of caves she walked in diffuse sunlight. Was she back on the surface? She strained to look up as far as she could, expecting artificial illumination, bewildered at the mix of apparent high technology and simplicity.

  “Okay, what powers the lighting?” Shan asked.

  “Sunlight,” said Sam.

  “How?”

  “Gathered at the surface, reflected down here.” He didn’t seem about to go into detail. So they were definitely underground. “It normally suffices.”

  “Is the climate that extreme?”

  “Extreme?”

  “You live underground.”

  “No, the winters get cold, but I would not say extreme.”