Alien Earth (5 page)

[I do. Evangeline will have Beast time?]

“Perhaps. Line up correctly.”

[I do. Evangeline would like a mating.]

A mating? Tug decided it wouldn’t fit into the schedule. He matched one of his modified nematocysts carefully to one of Evangeline’s nerve centers and expertly discharged it. So much for that impulse. He monitored her, felt her interest in mating fade as the inhibitor took effect. Docility returned to the Beastship.

[Docking with Delta Station. Tug will play a game with Evangeline?]

“Later. If Evangeline docks well, and does not complain about the unloading, then Tug will play a game. Pay attention to the frequency emanations and line up to match them. Then you will dock well.”

[Evangeline pays attention. Docking with Delta Station.]

I
N COMPARISON TO
the quiet of Evangeline’s gondola, the corridors of Delta Station swirled with life and its accompanying cacophony of noise. John felt all the symptoms of sensory overload syndrome: the headache, the vague nausea, the lassitude of permanent gravity. None of them were enough to completely distract his mind from his most gnawing discomfort: Norwich had expressed polite disinterest in renegotiating their contract. John clenched his teeth and resolutely jerked his mind away from considering it. He had business to conduct, and he’d better be alert about it. He nodded agreement to whatever pleasantry the garrulous little representative from Earth Affirmed was mouthing as John followed him through Delta’s corridors. It irked John that no one else had expressed any interest in hiring them.

Time was when he and Evangeline would have had a dozen offers before he’d even docked. But they’d worked steady runs for Norwich so long now that no one even considered them anymore. He’d posted Evangeline’s availability on the listings screen, but didn’t hope for much from that. Every captain knew that the only decent jobs were the ones that came looking for a specific ship and captain, and they’d been off the open market too long. He’d already had a couple of calls from other captains, wanting to know how he and Norwich had fallen out. Well, he was damned if he knew, he
reflected bitterly. The only other call had been from Earth Affirmed, reiterating their interest and setting up this meeting.

“… disorientation and sensory overload when you first come back into a station?”

“Usually,” John replied shortly, guessing at the man’s question. “It’s a hazard of the profession. One learns to live with it.”

Deckenson insisted on talking to him as they walked. John wished he wouldn’t. He was only hearing about one third of what Earth Affirmed’s man was saying, and couldn’t keep his mind on that much. The sights and sounds of Human activity in the station corridors were overwhelming after the years aboard Evangeline. That those years had passed as a matter of months for John didn’t diminish the effect, but intensified it. How could so much have changed so greatly in what felt like such a short time to him?

The wide white corridors of Delta Station swarmed with people of all ages, dressed in every imaginable garment. The brightness diffusing from the high-domed ceilings made it eternally a summer morning. A light wind stirred the plantings and people’s garments, carrying with it a scent of flowers and only a trace of machine oil from the fans that generated it. The utilitarian corridors he remembered had blossomed into something more reminiscent of a botanical garden. Even the people looked cultivated for their diversity. Riotous colors and swirling fabrics of every sort had replaced the sedate white togas and brown leggings that had been in favor when he left. Even stranger was the population change. A Rabby had been a rare sight when last he’d been here. Now they made up about one quarter of the population, and at almost every corner there were discreet jets where they could recharge their breathing tanks. The Arthroplana had recently and somewhat grudgingly granted Humans the privilege of having unsupervised contact with selected Rabby individuals on a face-to-face basis. The grant had been accompanied by many dour warnings that Humans were as yet still too disharmonious in nature to be granted general access to the Rabby race as a whole. From the few Rabby John had ever communicated with, he wondered why anyone would want to talk to any of them, unsupervised and face-to-face or any other way. They were boring as hell. Yet the fact that the
Arthroplana had the power to restrict Humanity’s access to the other sentient species still galled him. It all came back to the Arthroplana’s monopoly on interplanetary travel. Didn’t everything? he reminded himself sourly.

The population diversity wasn’t the only change in the corridors. Decorative art seemed to be enjoying a renaissance. The austerity of slag sculptures had given way to living embellishments. John could remember when the export of live plants to any of the dirty-tech stations, for other than edible use, had been a grave offense. He could still remember his very first trip to one of the tank rooms, his small hands secured in front of him lest he yield to any disruptive unadjusted impulses. He’d hated the plants then, because he’d believed they could never be his, could never be touched by him. So often they’d told him he could never be allowed around any living thing except another Human.

Now vinery draped doorways and blossoms dangled from sculptures. Fountains spattered and danced in enfoliated basins at every intersection. Music was playing, at an audio level that was so low he was barely sure he could hear it, yet it was annoyingly pervasive. Last time he’d been in port, public music had been illegal in the corridors. Noise pollution, they’d called it. All music had been confined to private residences and offices, so that those who didn’t enjoy it didn’t have to be annoyed by it. John turned to ask Deckenson about it, only to realize the man was a dozen steps ahead of him, still blithely chattering. Spotting him and catching up to him were not problems; John was taller than anyone he’d seen in the satellite corridors.

“Oh, there you are!” Deckenson exclaimed with asperity as John loomed up beside him. He reached up and took a firm grip on the right cuff of John’s orange flight suit. “Don’t wander off again. I’m trying to explain our position to you, and why this must be handled so delicately.”

The small man’s grip on his cuff annoyed John, but he didn’t shake it off. Part of why Mariner was his first option was because he could adapt to new customs, even within his own species. And this casual physical familiarity seemed to be the current custom. Everywhere, people clung to one another as they hurried down the corridors. Trios and quartets, all gripping hands or clothing as they bustled along, were not
uncommon. Huddles of people cuddled on benches as they talked. So he tolerated Deckenson’s grip and tried not to put any emotional tags on it. Male/male bonding had also been unpopular last time he was here, but that, too, seemed to have changed. Or perhaps it was only that every time John docked somewhere, it seemed that the prepubes looked more asexual. He knew Deckenson was a male only because his secretary had referred to him as “him” when John had been waiting to see him.

He looked down on his escort as Deckenson hustled him along. At least the smaller man was trotting; John’s longer legs matched his stride effortlessly. Deckenson’s hair was long and pale and flounced with every step he took. Looking down on it made John feel like a giant in contrast to Deckenson’s fine-boned stature. He lifted a hand to his own scalp and ruffled up the scant growth of dark hair on it. Shaving the scalp and treating the follicles with inhibitor was a standard procedure before entering Waitsleep. His hair was as long as it ever got, and would soon be stripped back to bare scalp again; that is, if his negotiations with Deckenson went well, and he contracted a mission for the Evangeline.

For the hundredth time, he wished Norwich had renewed their shipping contract. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what had gone wrong. “Sorry. Our company no longer has any need for your services. We’ll be happy to supply you with an excellent reference.” John hadn’t even got past their outer offices. And that was it. No explanations. The only thing he could come up with was that someone had undercut his price. But no other Beastship in port had the vast cargo capacity that Evangeline had. She was practically the only “lifeboat” left unmodified since evacuation days. He couldn’t figure it out, and it was keeping him from concentrating on his dealings with Earth Affirmed.

Not that he especially wanted to concentrate on them. Earth Affirmed had a reputation among Beastship captains, and it wasn’t good. In a word, they were crackpots. Always stepping on the Conservancy’s toes, always pushing to the limits of the law. Fines, warnings, and cargo seizures seemed to follow in the wake of any deals with them. Earth Affirmed itself had too much funding to feel much of the Conservancy’s displeasure. So when their high-handed ways needled the
Conservancy badly enough, the Conservancy’s wrath usually fell on Earth Affirmed’s minions. Like their ship captains. Years ago, Chester on the Beastship N’raltha had taken the scorching for bringing Rabby imports into Beta Station. The Conservancy had ruled them environmentally dangerous, and the captain, ultimately responsible for his ship’s conduct, had undergone complete Readjustment and two years of intensive environmental respect classes. Nowadays, the same raw materials routinely came into the dirty-tech stations for processing, under the supervision and taxation of the Conservancy. John idly wondered what Chester was doing now; whatever it was, it wouldn’t have anything to do with marinering.

John tried to sigh away the uneasiness the thought gave him. He wished he could just get a contract and be out of here. Too many rules in the stations, and if John was going to bend any of them, he was going to do it for his own benefit, not for some big corporation that would leave him to take the heat if things went bad. He didn’t need that kind of complications in his life. He didn’t need any complications in his life.

In fact, the older he got, the less time he liked to spend in port. The light and bustle of the corridor was already making him think longingly of the privacy of the Waitsleep womb and the quiet of Evangeline’s crew quarters. He still had his pickup of Ginger’s wares and his rendezvous with Andrew to look forward to. Even those errands carried some nerve-wracking risks of their own. About the only thing he was actually looking forward to was a visit to a semiscrupulous dealer for a rather esoteric poetry recording that he intended especially for Tug’s edification. He grinned at the thought, and found Deckenson was smiling back up at him, in mistaken interpretation of John’s expression.

“So, do you approve of the changes in living conditions here? We’ve been instrumental in lobbying against the Conservancy’s ridiculous ban against all but sentient life-forms in station corridors. Quite a switch from when you were a boy, I imagine. The plants make quite a difference, don’t they?”

“Yes. They do,” John replied awkwardly. He hoped Deckenson hadn’t been talking about anything more important than interior decoration. He realized he hadn’t been listening to him. How could he, while wandering through this
chaos? He wished the man would settle down somewhere and talk. But no, first it had been a meeting at his office, which accomplished little more than actually making contact with this representative of Earth Affirmed, and being endlessly introduced to office staff. He’d expected to have to sit through some kind of negotiating meeting there, but abruptly Deckenson had insisted that he and John had to go out to lunch. They’d been walking now for twenty minutes but Deckenson showed no signs of stopping.

“You’re impatient with us, aren’t you?” Deckenson suddenly asked, as if he had read John’s mind. He didn’t wait for John’s cautious nod. “That’s in our files about you; that you have an impatient nature. It’s a fault, John, one you should work on. At least, for our business, it is. Think on this …”

And he was off again, looking all around and talking as they walked, so John could barely follow his words. Earth Affirmed seemed to have an affinity for garrulous, busy little men. Their last representative had been just like this; he could have been Deckenson’s clone. John began to believe he’d have turned down their last two offers even if he hadn’t had Norwich’s contract.

“Earth Affirmed has had to be patient. Even to gain these small concessions from the Conservancy has taken lifetimes. Patience, John. It’s one of our virtues, and the chief reason why we still exist, so many years after Earth’s Evacuation. We’ve been here since the very first Humans came to Castor and Pollux; we’re a contemporary of the Conservancy itself, if you would credit it. Very few other Human institutions have managed to exist as long as we have, and most of them were religious organizations that merged into the Conservancy’s philosophy; scarcely separate entities at all anymore. But Earth Affirmed has stood firm. All we’ve had was our dream and our patience to sustain us. It’s our sense of mission that’s kept us going. A mission that’s needed a certain kind of man to reach fulfillment. And now, we think, we may have our man.”

He looked up at John suddenly as he said this, and there was such fervent hope in the man’s face that John drew back from him. Looks like that always meant the same thing. Someone was about to put grapplers on you and hold on, to depend and ask favors and demand promises. It was a look
no Mariner could fairly accept or return. To see it on this businessman’s face was doubly unsettling.

If Deckenson noticed John’s withdrawal, he didn’t comment on it. “The restaurant’s here,” he declared suddenly. “Let’s go in.” Without waiting for John’s response, he ducked into a doorway nearly obscured by a vine trellised over it. John followed, ducking more deeply than Deckenson had.

Deckenson was already following the host to a table. John fell in behind him. Damn. The whole place was scaled down to the size the Human race had become. The walkways between the tables were narrower, the tables lower, the chairs more spindly than any John had ever seen. All the furniture and screens were of woven tika vine, hardened with tika syrup into a glossy finish. He’d never seen it used for chairs and tables before, and wondered if it would take his weight. He felt disoriented, like the time he had wandered into an older part of Evangeline’s gondola and encountered the formidable couches and work surfaces his ancestors had used. Only this was like being invited into a creche’s playroom. Eyes turned to him as he passed. He hadn’t felt stared at in the corridors, but here the attention was impossible to ignore. His close-cropped hair and traditional orange flight suit were enough to mark him as a Mariner; his hulking size advertised his great age as well. He wasn’t sure which trait was drawing all the attention.

The host was very smooth about bringing a larger chair for John, but couldn’t do much about how low the table was. John waved off his apologies and accepted a small menu. He was studying its ornate print when he realized Deckenson was looking at him. John met his gaze.