Slow Train to Arcturus Read online

  The thought still filled him with dread. He was already close enough to changeover to start having longing thoughts of the nesting territory he was from. The idea of alien air was terrifying. He did not want to breathe it. And then he saw something even more horrifying. Derfel was picking up some of the alien stuff up and putting it into his mouth.

  "You'll die!" he said, horrified.

  "We'll die if we don't eat," said Derfel. "Get used to it, Abret. We've had no more calls from the spacecraft. Something has gone wrong. And the two of us can't fly the spacecraft. You can do the navigation, yes. But I can't do the engineering. At least we are trapped in an environment where we can breathe the air, and hopefully eat the food, and where the natives are friendly."

  Derfel was in one of his more rational periods. He'd been quite right: leaving immediately when they got the call had been impossible. Having Abret admit he'd been right did seem to soothe him.

  "Well, yes. But are they going to stay friendly, Derfel? I mean, Zawn believed that the other ones were friendly, and they were attacked. We'd better get back to the spacecraft. We're closing on Miran. Maybe we can get instructions by laser-transmission."

  "They'll worship us forever," said Derfel confidently. "While you've been moping, I've had Transcomp working on the language. They believe that we are the saviors from the West, finally come to free them from the oppressor. If we have a problem, it will be explaining what took us so long to get here, not when we're going to leave. They pray that we will stay forever. This will be home, I'm afraid. They will treat us well, at least."

  Abret knew that, by using the hormone supplements on the lander he could put off changing sex for another few years. There was also some food from the synthesizers and protein vats on the spacecraft. But then… well, no place would be like home, except some place that had a lot of the scents of home. As a female one's sense of smell became very keen. "We can't…"

  "We can," said Derfel crossly.

  Then his radio came to life. "Is anyone receiving me?"

  It was a Miran voice. Abret would have thought any voice but Derfel's would be welcome. However…

  The pitch of the voice was that of a Miran in hormonal shift, and well on the way to becoming female. The hormonal shifts caused extreme irritability and some degree of irrational behavior. That was the reason Miran tended to leave those in changeover to themselves. They were dangerous-and very territorial.

  "Selna?"

  "Who do think it is, you idiot?"

  11

  Re Habitat 37.

  Date: 2120-11-4 Time: 15:31 NMT

  From: Chief Scientist S. Guthrie (Environment Construction)

  To: Chief Construction (Spacefitting) Officer M. Kabongo

  Re: repair and maintenance robots.

  Mike K, you're a cantankerous and ornery pain in the butt. Look, the Brethren are archaic agriculturalists. These guys actually kill pigs and chickens to eat. That's had the animal welfare groups on Earth in ferment and it's got the Brethren claiming they're victims of religious persecution. The habitat environment is set up on the lowest degree of mechanization we can contrive. They've even got synthetic soils instead of stable granule growing mediums. They're planning on growing trees! The microdrop set-up is supposed to be manually serviceable, which as you know from A23 the others aren't. These guys plan to cart dung and fertilize their soils. It's primitive but it might just outlast those JB232 units you're fussing about. Where the hell is this lot going to get the knowhow to repair a JayBee? Our modeling analyses show that complex and varied agricultural units have a degree of plasticity and biofeedback that more mono-focus ones don't have. There will still be micro-monitoring and macro-consumables replacement while they're in Deep Space. They're way under carrying-capacity and as long as they restrict their population growth, they'll be probably be better off than some of the other habitats.

  Now that Kretz was healing and talking, and had proved less demonic than Howard had secretly feared, Howard found that he was beginning to enjoy his houseguest. For starters, he never knew quite what Kretz would say next. For a second thing, Kretz liked talking about mechanical things. He liked to work out just how they worked. And he kept asking Howard. This gave Howard a great rationalized excuse to think about them. Of course there were some areas of confusion to clear up.

  First, that pigs were not intelligent part owners of New Eden.

  And, second, that humans were very different from Miran, despite the similarities.

  "Transcomp wishes to know what the honorifics 'Brother and Sister' mean, since they seem to be more than simple family references."

  "Who is Transcomp?" asked Howard.

  "It is my mechanical translator. It works on the vocabulary I have established and also deduces other meanings and words and the way the speech should be structured. Zawn is… was our expert on translation. He said that your language was old, because it was complex and had absorbed structure and words from several logical rule-pattern stems."

  That didn't clarify very much. Well, Howard thought, it was his turn now. He blushed, just thinking about trying to explain sexual differences in humans to Kretz. Perhaps he could get Sister Thirsdaughter to do it. She was a midwife, and Kretz… was somewhere between the two of them. Hopefully… she'd do it when he wasn't around!

  He heard her outside. She had a habit of singing choruses while she walked. Howard hastily found a reason to go and do some chores in his kitchen. Never had chores seemed so attractive.

  But scrubbing his tabletop was interrupted by Sister Thirsdaughter calling. Reluctantly, but worried in case something was really wrong, he went.

  "Explain to Brother Kretz that you are not female, Howard. He believes that because you are big and your skin is taut you might be."

  Howard lost himself in a tangle of half-sentences. The only small comfort was that Kretz was obviously as embarrassed as he was. He was attempting to hide his face behind his hand.

  Sister Thirsdaughter was taking all too much pleasure in it all. "He also labored under the delusion that because you were bigger than I was, you were much older. I gather that you were able to persuade him that pigs were not another form of human this morning?"

  "Yes," said Howard, eager to change the direction of the conversation. "One of my shotes got out of the sty and looked in at the window this morning. Kretz had seen wild ones up near the core."

  "You will be relieved to know that I can tell my fellow councilors that you did not undress a woman after all, Howard. Kretz is male, at the moment, and will be for some years, still. Then he'll change to having babies instead of fathering them. They keep growing throughout life, like trees. They have babies when their bodies are large enough. It makes good sense actually." She cocked her head and looked at him. "A penny for your thoughts, young man."

  "I have just realized that 'looks like' does not mean 'is like,' " said Howard. "A door is still a door if it is made of wood or metal, but the stuff of it, and the making of it is not the same."

  "You're too bright for your own good," she said with a smile. "Now, I have decided that it would do Kretz a bit of good to take a short walk outside. I've never believed in bed-rest unless absolutely necessary. The muscles become pulp, and the digestive system doesn't work properly. But he needs someone your size-even if you're not female-to catch him before he falls over. That arm needs protecting. Walk him around your garden. And then I shall sit with him while you go and irrigate your crops."

  So Howard took Kretz out to look at the herbs and then-to Kretz's evident excitement-the chickens. Kretz stared at them for a long time, before Howard went and caught him a new hatched chick to hold.

  Kretz shook his head. "They are so much stranger than you. We have nothing like this on Miran!"

  The cow and the pigs and even the sheep, while plainly fascinating, failed to make as much of an impression as a single egg, and the flip-flop of rooster-flight.

  "One thing I have been meaning to ask you," said Kretz, watching Howard la
boriously shovel animal feces into a simple one-wheeled barrow with two handles. "Why do you do everything yourselves? A machine could do this in seconds. I have seen your repair machines.. ."

  Howard lowered his spade and looked around in what seemed to be a wary manner. "Don't let anyone, even Sister Thirsdaughter, hear you say that word. I know you don't understand, Kretz, but it's sacrilege to even suggest doing such work by machine. They robbed mankind of their purpose and their dignity. Robots are an invention of Satan."

  Robots. Kretz told Transcomp to file that word, and to use it only with prior notification. Personally he couldn't see what purpose and dignity had to do with shoveling animal manure, but then he wasn't human, for which he was deeply thankful. Increasingly, he was realizing that these humans were primitive-not because they'd lost their technological knowledge, but because they'd chosen to do so. That made for a simple life, but a rather tedious one at times. It also seemed rather counterintuitive to their long-term survival in space.

  Today he had walked, with a pause to sit down, with Howard to the water reservoir in the nearby polar region.

  He was still getting over the shock of that experience.

  Besides watching Howard carrying buckets made of hard plant-matter, and rolling a barrel made of the same stuff, which was bad enough, he'd also seen something that made him despair.

  It was a sight he'd longed for.

  The airlock.

  But it was not the right one.

  Now it was finally clear to him just what he had done while his mind had been hazed with pain and blood-loss. He had indeed escaped the stripe-faced humans-by leaving their space-habitat entirely. He'd crawled down the inside of the linking cable to another habitat. No wonder the locals didn't know what he was talking about. No wonder these "brethren" managed to live such peaceful lives. They had a gulf of space to protect them.

  Of course, that also made getting back to his ship nearly impossible. Not only did he have hostiles to contend with but space too. If only he hadn't closed the door to the cable behind him.

  He sat down on the bed in Howard's room and examined the rebreather and suit-tank-and his radio. It was only the high-gain antenna that taken a direct hit. And even that was a testimony either to the toughness of the antenna, or to the ineffectiveness of the weapons of the stripy-faces. It still hung by a thread of metal. It was still useless and unfixable without the proper tools. Howard watched, fascinated. When Kretz dropped it onto the bed in disgust, he said "I could mend it for you, Brother."

  Kretz resisted the temptation to say with what? Cow dung and spit ? It was kindly meant. "I think it is beyond your ability," he said.

  "The solder we use for stained glass might work." Howard obviously had learned to recognize Miran bewilderment by now. He just walked out and came back with a little glass container, made up of multicolored fragments in a metal frame-matrix. It was a picture, Kretz realized, made by sticking fragments together. A delicate, intricate and very decorative item that would have been intensely desirable on Miran. He blinked. It was not what he'd expected of the aliens.

  "Look," said Howard, "you join the cames like this." He pointed to a tiny spot of shiny metal, plainly melted into place.

  "You did this?"

  Howard nodded. "It is my hobby."

  Hobby was a new word to Kretz. It seemed wrong that a man who could do this kind of work was shoveling animal excreta.

  "I suppose you can try," he said. After all, what did he have to lose? The radio didn't work now. Howard's attempts could only leave him just as badly off. Besides he wanted to see how the alien did this feat of dexterity. Having a grasping finger-which they called a thumb-on the inner side of the hand made everything that Howard did seem either awkward or intensely miraculous to Kretz.

  He found himself both amazed and aghast at just how Howard did the job. He didn't have a single real tool, just heat and some small steel rods. But he was very dexterous with them and very, very precise. At Kretz's direction he joined the antenna and soon had it appearing fixed.

  Warily, Kretz switched it on. Flicked send. "This is Kretz for the Spacecraft or any other receivers. Respond."

  He waited. It crackled. Well, it had been a forlorn hope anyway. The system seeded granule-sized passive repeaters at communication intervals, but they probably were of insufficient strength to carry across the distance needed, relaying into and out of the cable-tube.

  He tabbed to search-beacon just in case. That would scan and ping off any radio source. It was a search and rescue device that had saved many a lost traveler. It would give strength, directional and distance data, if it picked up anything-if the alien's soldering hadn't wrecked more than it healed. If there wasn't other, less visible damage…

  He got three pings.

  For a brief instant he knew wild hope. Suit radios?

  One was definitely not of any use. Distance suggested that it must be in the region of the fusion plant. Presumably alien.

  The other two… one was forward on the bead-string, in the same direction as the ramscoop. The second was a powerful signal too-in the opposite direction. It must be the beacon on the spacecraft. The first must be beacon on the lifecraft.

  Still forward. Abret and Derfel must have had a problem there too.

  And then… a voice. A frantic voice speaking Miran. "Who is out there? Reply."

  Along with the joy and the relief came shock and a degree of horror.

  With sex-change came changes in vocal pitch. And Kretz had seen them shoot him… now, by the sounds of it, her. He'd seen Selna fall, and be kicked and spat at.

  But this sounded like… Selna. A female Selna. Shock and trauma could bring on early sex change.

  Female Miran needed certain things. First, they needed territory. And then, before they could start gathering a harem, they needed to have lots of space and only cautious people anywhere near them. The hormonal adjustment made them very snappy.

  Selna was loaded with male hormone supplements. Readjustment was going to be dangerous-for anyone who couldn't run. And there wasn't a lot of space on the ship to run in. "Who is out there! Answer me! If you're some alien scum you might as well know I've got the airlock booby-trapped. If it is Abret again, I can't get to you. You'll have to get yourself free, idiot!" screamed the changed-over Selna, raw fury and anxiety mixed in equal quantities.

  "Kretz calling in," he said, as speaking calmly as he could.

  "Speak louder!"

  He tried again. But, as Selna began a tirade about being alone, he realized that the problem was a simple one. The suit-radio just lacked the power to send far with clarity enough to transmit voice. He could receive, as the spacecraft's radio unit was far higher powered, with far greater range and signal clarity. He couldn't do anything to soothe her anxiety. He also couldn't ask for help, even if she was in a position to render it. The spacecraft's physician could manage the hydroponics, as a second skill, but she couldn't fly the ship alone. Navigationally, the return did not require as much skill as matching trajectories and landing had, but it still required more than Selna possessed. Kretz himself might have managed it, especially with laser-sent guidance from Miran. He would still have to get a braking orbit right, but there was a little more space for a margin of error. ..

  The situation did leave him feeling comforted on one issue. Laser messages would have surely beamed back from her to Miran. Yes, it was too far-off to be of any help to Selna, but they would be warned of the impending attack.

  Looking up, Kretz realized that Howard was staring into his face with that forehead wrinkling that signified worry in the aliens.

  "What's wrong?" asked Howard. "It is working properly now? I heard voices issue from it. Is it possessed?" He had the Bible-thing in one hand… and a piece of heavy dried plant-material in the other. For a moment Kretz thought he was being threatened. Then he realized that Howard's gaze was now focused on the radio antenna.

  "It is working. That is what it is supposed to do," he said soothin
gly. "That was the voice of one of my companions. She was injured but managed to get back on the ship. She is alone and very afraid. My transmitter-the part of this machine that can send my voice across the distance-is too weak to reach her with my voice. All she knows is that there is a signal from far away. Her sender is very much more powerful. I can hear her."

  The alien proved much more empathetic than Kretz had expected. "You must go to her, then. She must be in a terrible state."

  "She is. She was the expedition's healer. I hope she can help herself." Kretz paused. But he felt he had to tell someone. "I left Selna for dead. I ran and hid when Selna fell."

  Howard tugged his face-mane. And then, awkwardly, he put a hand on Kretz's shoulder. "Don't blame yourself, brother."

  "I can't help it. I should have stayed," said Kretz.

  "By what you've told me both of you would have died. Maybe because they followed you, she got away."

  For an alien he was very understanding.

  "We must get you back there, brother. She'll need you."

  Very understanding.

  "She'll need a man's guidance."

  Howard did not understand Miran at all. Even with Selna in an emotional and disordered state, Kretz felt in need of female guidance. They were bigger, older and wiser… Except, well, if he was logical about it, Selna wasn't much wiser.

  But in one way Howard was right. Kretz had to get back to the ship. The trouble was that he was space and a hostile bead away from the spacecraft. The answer was simple-yet terrifying. He'd have to go out onto the surface, because he couldn't get back inside the cable-tube… somehow cross the gulf between the habitats, and then instead of going inside the bead full of stripe-faced murderers, cross the outside of it. Then he just had to climb the equatorial ridge, and walk to the Miran spacecraft.

  Easy…

  Compared perhaps to drinking an ocean or the alternatives. He'd need an army-not likely to be forthcoming from the Brethren-or fantastic luck to get through the hostile bead. The only further problem he could see was that even if he could get through, Selna might not let him in. Not surprisingly, she'd sounded a little paranoid.