Participant Species: Asher in Ordered Space Volume I Page 4

  Asher smiled in return. “OK, Lori. You can call me Asher. Everyone does.”

  “Excellent. Well, now our team is complete. I see you brought your guns.” She was looking at his hip holster with an unreadable expression.

  Asher decided not to take offense. Many operatives from the more peaceful parts of Hokozana, like Lori’s Lang and Cult desk at Research, showed a certain trepidation around weapons. “Well, I am with Security. It would be pretty pointless to have me here without them.”

  “I suppose,” said Lori. “Just try not to use them, OK?”

  Asher smiled again, trying for a reassuring attitude. “I can’t see how it would come to that.” He decided to try for a change of topic. “Where are Kaz and the others?”

  “They went to New Town for a drink or two and to get some human food. We’re all pretty tired of the dehydrated stuff, and Cythran cooking doesn’t really work with our metabolisms. Don’t worry, they’ll be back soon. In the meantime, we’ll just have to sit down and get to know each other.” Lori turned to Qwadaleemia, who was standing quietly near the door. “Are you staying, Qwadie?”

  “Sorry, Lori. I have to get back to the ship. I left Sarudeero in charge. You can see the potential for disaster.” Qwadaleemia made a complicated gesture that apparently conveyed mild apology.

  Lori laughed. “Well, we must sit down and have another chat soon, okay? We’re only here until tomorrow morning, I think, but we’ll be back by-and-by.”

  Qwadaleemia made a gesture that Asher’s net translated as [smiling]. “Okay,” she said. “I may not see you this evening or tomorrow, but I’ll be here when you return.” With that, she turned to go. “I leave you in Lori’s hands, Asher. Welcome again to Cierren Cythra.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” said Asher. “And good luck on your next run.” He wasn’t sure if she’d understand the traditional saying, but she seemed to smile again as she left.

  “Well,” said Lori. “Here we are on Cierren Cythra. Isn’t it something?”

  Chapter Three

  The rest of the Hokozana party straggled in during the soft light of Dim-day, the Cierran Cythra evening. They were all a little tipsy. Apparently, some enterprising soul somehow loosely affiliated with the Zvezda Company maintained a small bar for the few humans who visited or were posted to Marateen. The first to arrive was Namen Ravkar. She introduced herself to Asher, who was surprised at her soft handshake and generally charming personality. From her dossier, he had expected a typical Marketing go-getter. But then, she was a diplomat. Charm was just part of the job. Jaydrupar came in right behind Ravkar. He looked Asher up and down and said, “I remember you from that Ferether mess. How do you do?” Asher shook hands with him, figuring it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. They all had to get along for the next few days, after all.

  Kazmalewski was the last to enter. The huge bear of a man erupted through the door and enveloped Asher in an enormous hug. “Old man!” he yelled, thumping Asher painfully between the shoulder blades. “How ya’ been?” Asher was only about two years older than Kazmalewski, but he had been “old man” to his giant friend ever since they had started out in Security together.

  “How’s it going, Kaz?” said Asher. “Nice to be back on your team.”

  “Hell, yeah, old man! You remember that time we were out alone in those creepy woods on Dinshane?”

  Asher smiled. That had been one the strangest missions he could remember. Apparently, Hokozana higher-ups were still there, trying to figure out if a whole forest could be sentient even if each individual plant was dumb as a proverbial rock. “Of course I remember Dinshane. I think my father is still going crazy trying to figure that place out.”

  “Wait. Maxim Asher is your father?” Lori turned to Asher and looked at him closely. “Of course he is, I should have figured that out. How is the old coot, anyway?”

  “Well, we’re not really in touch that often. As I said, last I heard he was on Dinshane, but that must be nearly a year ago.”

  “Oh,” said Lori. “Bad blood?”

  “Just family, I guess. It’s complicated.” His father, a big cheese in Research, tended to be well known among the Hokozana scientific community. Asher hoped they could drop the subject, though. His relationship with Maxim Asher was a complicated subject he didn’t really want to get into right now.

  “Well. I guess we can all relate to that,” said Lori. Asher was glad to see that she seemed to be willing to let it drop.

  The five operatives settled into the now-crowded living room space. Despite the twilight look to the sunlight streaming in through the open door world, it was only 1430 standard. Asher was going to have to get used to the quick local days. He also didn’t relish the idea of a five hour night. He brought up the issue with the others.

  “Yeah,” said Kaz. “It’s pretty crazy. We’re still all getting used to it. Me and Lori have a bit of a head start, I guess.”

  Lori laughed. “Well, we have been her the longest.” She turned to Asher. “We came down from Cormorant about two days ago, almost as soon as she came through the jumpgate.”

  “Hasim and I only arrived a yesterday,” said Ravkar. “We caught a small Zvezda Company cargo ship on its way into the system. We’ve been relying on Kaz and Lori to be our local experts.”

  “Well, now that we are all here, what’s the plan? Are we moving on to this ‘long house’ place?” Jaydrupar, silent until now, suddenly seemed very intent on get bringing the conversation around to practicalities.

  “That’s the plan,” said Ravkar. “Its the closest thing the Cythrans seem to have to a center of government. We’ve got local transport arranged for tomorrow morning.” Then she laughed. “Of course, that really means about 0200 standard time. I’ll be lucky if I can keep my eyes open on the drive. Anyway, Lori, can you fill Asher in? I think I need to get my rest when I can.”

  “I can handle it,” said Lori.

  Ravkar and Jaydrupar headed up the narrow staircase, presumably to sleeping quarters on one of the upper stories. Lori and Kaz stayed with Asher in the living room. They talked until what to Asher was late afternoon, but on Cierren Cythra was the middle of the night.

  “Won’t you be tired in the morning?” asked Lori.

  Asher laughed. “Don’t worry, Security operatives don’t need sleep like regular people.”

  “I suppose I should have known. I swear Kaz hasn’t slept for more than twenty minutes at a stretch in the past three days.”

  With that, Lori headed upstairs as well, leaving Kaz and Asher alone in the darkened living room.

  “So what gives?” asked Asher. “Is this really the cake-walk Marcolis made it out to be?”

  Kaz sighed. “I think there’s something more going on here, but you know how it is. No one tells the Security guys anything.”

  Kaz tended to play the big dumb galoot, but Asher knew from experience that he was a consummate watcher and listener. He was good at figuring out what others left unsaid. “Come on, Kaz. Let me in on the secret, huh?”

  The big man stood up from the sofa and paced the room. It took him only a stride or two to cover the tiny space from end to end. “Well, let’s start with the Cythrans. What do you know about them?”

  “Not much. Some basic downloads and what I saw on the ship and the walk through the city with Qwadaleemia.”

  “Yeah. Take Qwadie. She’s probably the Cythran we know best, so she’s a good example. What did you think of her flying?”

  Asher thought of the smooth spaceflight and the relatively even landing. He figured that what he had experienced on the Sissilbeni was well within the standards of what he would expect from any small in-system ship anywhere. “I thought she was pro caliber, I guess.”

  “Exactly. How do you think she learned that?”

  Asher thought about it. “I don’t know. I assume she must have grown up with it. I mean, Zvezda One has been up there twenty years. It’s impressive, sure, but there’s been enough time.”

  Kaz sat
down heavily. The rickety sofa creaked and groaned at the weight. “What if I told you that she just started flying three weeks ago, after being some kind of teacher for the first thirty years of her life?”

  Asher was dumbfounded. He had never heard of anyone learning to fly competently that fast. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’d have to figure she was some kind of genius. A natural talent.”

  “And that’s where the crazy comes in. They’re all like that. The females, anyway. They pick up new skills—things way beyond their pre-contact experience—in a few days. I’ve seen kids that are roughly equivalent to a human five year old in physical age doing complex math and driving cars. And it doesn’t end there, they’re making the stuff now too. This creche—Qwadie’s family—have just decided to become the first Cythran space corp, so they bought the Sissilbeni and now they’re building their own ship. Their own design, I mean—not even on some old fuselage or anything.”

  Asher whistled. He’d never heard of a species of geniuses, but he supposed it was technically possible. Hell, anything was possible. “If that’s for real,” he said, “that changes everything.”

  “I know,” said Kaz. “We’re not looking at an untapped market. We’re not just looking at the next Participant Species, even. At the rate the Cytrhans going, it’ll take them a few years at most before they’ll be building their own gates and sending out their own scouts.”

  A new Participant Species made up of natural technical geniuses. Suddenly, Asher realized that their mission here wasn’t just an attempt to wrest a small piece of the system away from DiJeRiCo. “We’re trying to bring them in, aren’t we? We’re going to make the Cythrans part of Hokozana.”

  Kaz nodded. “I think so. I think the higher-ups took one look at Cierren Cythra and saw the scientists, engineers, and pilots that are going to take Hokozana farther than any corp has been before.”

  Chapter Four

  Asher and Kaz slept in the living room. Kaz assured him that the sofa was the only decent piece of furniture in the house, anyway. Of course, that didn’t help Asher when he had to stretch out on the floor after Kaz had made himself comfortable on the sofa.

  He felt like he had barely closed his eyes when his neural net woke him again. He had set the alert for 0100, assuming he would be one of the first of the party to wake, but he found that Lori, Kaz, and Jaydrupar were already out in the courtyard. He stepped out to join them in the blue light of predawn Cierren Cythra.

  “Watch this,” said Lori, gesturing to the west.

  “What?” Asher asked, but he saw it before Lori could reply. Bright leapt up from below the horizon like a huge blue fireball. The atmosphere warped and twisted the star, fattening it until it looked like it would consume half the world. As suddenly as it had appeared, it had climbed high and was blazing its clean, blue-tinged light that reminded Asher of the artificial lighting on many space stations.

  “Welcome to a new Bright-Day,” said Jaydrupar. “Dim will be up in a couple hours, so enjoy the blue effect while it lasts.”

  A whining noise behind the group drew Asher’s attention away from the spectacle of the blazing star. It took him a moment to figure out that he was hearing a vehicle approaching along a broad avenue that entered the courtyard from the east. The ground car rocketed into the courtyard and screeched to a halt in right in front of the waiting humans. The vehicle looked like a sturdy dune buggy, with large plasteel tires supporting a chassis made from welded metal tubing. There were no doors or windows, and the roof was just a tightly drawn tarp made from something like thick leather. “Flutterbat hide,” said Lori, as Asher reached out to feel the stuff.

  The vehicle was driven by a female Cythran wearing an absurd purple suit. It reminded Asher of a tube sock with the toes cut off, so that the Cythran’s broad, flat feet and were head the only things protruding. The driver faced the humans and said, “Hello, Lori. Hello, Kaz. Who are the new ones?”

  Lori bowed slightly, a gesture that Asher’s neural net interpreted as a human approximation of a typical Cythran greeting. “Hello Wadie. These are Hasim and Asher. Guys, this is Wadameetra. She is one of Qwadie’s creche-mates, and also an operative of the First Cythran Spacelift Corporation.”

  Ravkar appeared shortly, and the five humans piled into the ungainly buggy. Asher was surprised to find that he fit easily in the large rear seat. He insisted on taking the back driver’s side corner, and he swung his machine gun off his shoulder and held it on his lap. Kaz rode shotgun. Lori rolled her eyes at the precautions, but the two Security men were not about to take any chances when driving out into the unknown on a wild planet.

  One they were aboard, Wadameetra spun the buggy about, almost crashing into the walls of one of the houses on the south edge of the courtyard. She turned a knob and the engine whine grew louder and louder as the vehicle accelerated along the broad avenue. Soon, they were flying through the city at what seemed to Asher to be breakneck speed. This must be the newer part of town, where the streets were broad and paved for vehicle traffic. Even so, he was sure they were going to run someone over or crash into a building.

  Despite Asher’s misgivings, they made it safely out onto the open plain. Wadameetra was obviously an able driver. Considering she had probably only learned a few days before, Asher thought she was actually pretty amazing. She was reckless to a fault, though, and on more than one turn Asher thought she had overbalanced the ungainly vehicle, only for her to regain control at the last moment. Oh well, Asher figured, genius didn’t necessarily come with common sense.

  The plain beyond the city was almost completely flat from horizon to horizon. Here and there, Asher made out a low rise, along with one somewhat higher hill one the edge of Marateen, just west of the city. To the south, the adobe apartments of Marateen strung along until they vanished into the early-morning haze. To the north, the city ended at the shore of a sparkling body of water, apparently a lake. The road, such as it was, was an unimproved track barely wide enough for the buggy. To either side of the trail were large irrigated fields planted with rows of greenish-orange bushes. This crop bore large red fruits or seed pods that were being harvested by hand by Cythrans working here and there among the plants. Asher noticed that all of these laborers seemed to be the smaller males. Perhaps such repetitive tasks were deemed more suitable for individuals of their restricted intelligence.

  They were driving due east, so the recently-risen Bright was at their backs. Even without looking, Asher could tell when Dim rose to join its larger companion. The quality of light changed over the course of a few moments from the diluted blue of Bright to a softer, yellowish tone. Sure enough, when he looked back he saw that the smaller, whiter Dim had now risen just above the horizon, hovering almost directly below the much larger orb of Bright.

  It was well into the Bright-Dim day when they finally slowed and pulled onto a side track leading between two low hedgerows marking a field boundary. Wadameetra hauled the buggy to a rough stop in front of a nondescript mud-walled structure by the side of the road. It was just a one-story block of adobe walls. As was evidently typical of Cythran architecture, it had no windows, only a low, open door. “Welcome to the Long House,” said Wadameetra, indicating the unprepossessing structure.

  “This is it?” asked Jaydrupar. “I thought it was a meeting-place for large councils.”

  Wadameetra wriggled her appendages in the Cythran version of laughter. “You have to come inside, of course,” she said.

  The five humans bundled out of the buggy and followed the purple-uniformed Cythran into the small structure. They found themselves in a single room, featureless except for a ramp in the floor leading downward. Wadameetra disappeared down this ramp with a last, “Follow me!”

  The Hokozana operatives cautiously descended the ramp into the dark below. As they went down, the light of Bright and Dim faded to pitch black. Asher swung his machine gun up and turned on the barrel-mounted flashlight. He saw that Kaz had done the same a little further up the r
amp behind him. In the light of the lamp, he could see that the ramp twisted to the left ahead. There was a diffuse artificial light coming from around the bend. A few more steps brought Asher to the edge of a vast open space. It was a huge bowl, like a stadium. He stood near the top. The ramp at his feet descended to a kind of podium or dais in the center of the bowl. The whole place was lit by electric bulbs hanging haphazardly from the ceiling.

  “It’s an auditorium,” said Ravkar. “It must hold five or six thousand, at least.”

  “A cavern,” said Lori.

  Jaydrupar said, “Can’t be a cavern. My downloads tell me that there’s no way one could form given this geology. This is a huge alluvial plain formed by a retreating ocean. All that’s below us is hundreds of feet of conglomerate”

  “So what then?” asked Asher.

  Jaydrupar looked up at the high ceiling. “I guess they must have excavated it.”

  Ravkar laughed uncertainly. “They couldn’t. Could they?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Lori. “Qwadie specifically said the the long house is more than three hundred standard years old. So whatever they did, they must have done it with basic archaeo-tech.”

  “Would that even be possible?” asked Kaz.

  “It’s an anomaly, for sure. File it away for now and we’ll try and find out more later. I think our party has arrived.” Ravkar pointed toward the center of the bowl. Wadameetra was gesturing toward them, but Asher’s neural net couldn’t read the movement from so far away in the murky auditorium. The purple-clad Cythran had been joined by several others.

  “These must be the creche-leaders,” said Lori. “The closest thing they seem to have to a government.”

  Ravkar and Lori headed down the ramp toward the group of Cythrans. Kaz followed behind, his machine gun slung over his shoulder. As Jaydrupar walked by, Asher heard him mutter, “Another thing I’d like to know. What kind of complex society has no real government?” Asher let the Intel man go ahead. Taking one last glance up the ramp behind him, Asher walked down toward the gathering.