Starship Home (11 page)

Marlowe lay in cover watching the starship, thinking, planning what he would do. After a time, he wriggled back until he could stand without being seen, got to his feet and moved off toward the village. Maze watched him go but did not follow. She had things to do. She knew a place where the flowers would be blooming at this time of year. It had once been a plant nursery. Its owners, their lives prolonged by Slarn medical techniques, were now living out retirement in a star system far away. In the years since they had been taken from Earth, their nursery had run wild and was perhaps more beautiful now than when it was a business. In spring, the jonquils and daffodils bloomed here, spreading out under the flowering peaches and pears, almonds and cherries. In summer, the roses followed, ramblers, and rugosas and gallicas and incense roses, spreading under the trees by seeding and suckering from their own roots so that the old plant nursery looked like Sleeping Beauty’s garden. Autumn, and the maples and liquid ambars and tulip trees colored and shed their leaves until they stood bare among the evergreen (ever gray-green) native eucalypts, while beneath them, peering through the dying leaves, the shyly hanging heads of helleborus flowers, white and pink, and green, bloomed, fattening their seed-heads for the spring and summer ripening which was to come.

Maze loved the old garden and knew it in all of its seasons. She came for its fruit and its flowers, for its seedlings and its seeds, but often she came simply to sit on an old iron seat which rusted in the sun and rain near a pond at the garden’s centre.

Today, she came for flowers. It was summer, and the roses were blooming and she chose the striped ones, the roses whose names she did not know, but whose original owners (now on that planet so far away) would have recognized as Rosa Mundi and Tricoleur de Flandres. She picked an armful, brushing aside the bees, trying not to frighten away the wattle birds sucking honey from a tall spiky patch of New Zealand flax, and then made her way back to the iron castle in the forest.

Inside the starship, while Maze was in the old plant nursery picking flowers, Harold had been interrogated. ‘What kind of village?’ asked Zoe, ‘What kind of people?’

‘Sort of Third World, if you know what I mean,’ Harold said. ‘Huts made of bark and wattle and daub…’

‘Which he didn’t know about till I told him last semester,’ Meg put in.

‘But which I remembered all about when I saw it,’ Harold answered defensively before going on, ‘they had gardens, but people were tanning skins, so they hunt, probably gather stuff like the men do in hunting-gathering societies…’

‘Studies have shown that most of the food collected by a hunting and gathering society is brought in by the women,’ Meg said in flat contradiction.

‘Funny you should say that,’ Harold said, ‘I think a woman’s running the place.’

‘Real primitives you mean?’ said Zachary, but Zoe and Meg did not laugh.

‘I was taken to this big hut in the middle of the village. There’s this really old lady there, a hundred years old she looked, and they called her Our Mother and treated her as if she was royalty or something. But there’s the witchdoctor guy, the one I tricked into letting me go after he got me away from the soldiers. Very interested in the windcheater.’ He tapped his chest.

‘Can we get food from them do you think?’ Zachary was getting very tied of khaki biscuits. He did not even want to think about blue gruel.

‘We could probably steal food there, yes,’ said Harold.

‘“Steal”, Harold? Are you a moral defective or something? You did say “steal”?’

Zoe chimed in after Meg. ‘You know how much hard work goes into growing food, Harold? Do you have any idea?’ Zoe knew very well. She had worked in the family market garden every day after school and in some seasons before school.

‘Don’t jump down my throat like that! In fantasy role-playing games it’s basic operating procedure that you steal anything you can get your hands on. And since this situation is more like a fantasy role-playing game than anything else, I naturally assumed…’

‘Just as I thought. He’s a moral defective,’ Meg said to the others.

‘Who you?’ said Maze. The strange voice stopped the discussion dead.

They looked at each other, and then at the main screen. On the screen they could see a little girl whose sun-bleached hair was held in place with a leather band. She was standing in the clearing, holding an armful of roses.

‘That’s the little girl I chased!’ Harold exclaimed.

‘Who you?’ Maze said again.

‘Dost know the Law, little one?’ Guinevere’s voice was soft and kind, pitched so that it would not frighten their visitor.

‘Law and the Promise is one,’ Maze gabbled out, saying something she had learned by rote as soon as she could talk, ‘You must build no cities, you must use no machines, you must join no wires, Elektrikkity is not for you.’

‘What is this stuff, Guinevere?’ Harold asked.

‘The false religion the Slarn plant on all their planets,’ said Guinevere. The Anthropological Survey must have been here.’

‘This is the Law,’ Maze rattled on. ‘Break the Law, Skygods come to destroy you. Keep the Law, Skygods give many children, much wealth, many enemies’ heads. The Promise and Law are one.’

‘This is the Law and the Promise,’ Guinevere responded gently. ‘Now, little one, what dost thou here?’

‘Who’s that talking?’

There was a quivering in the air in front of Maze, and slowly, gently, there manifested a transparent three-dimensional image of Guinevere. Maze was delighted. ‘Can see through you!’ she said. ‘You pictureshow lady?’

‘Nay, little one.’ Guinevere’s manifestation was smiling. ‘Many years ago, wizards took my body from me and locked me in this castle. This shade thou seest is how I once appeared.’

Maze held out her flowers. ‘Here is guestgift. Want to say sorry to strangerboy who chased me. I was scared of his animal. Got him in trouble with Trollwarriors.’

On the bridge, Zoe looked at Harold with scorn. Looking at young men with scorn was one of Zoe’s best things. She had practised scorn in front of the bathroom mirror and the practice had paid off. ‘Are you ashamed of yourself Harold? Are you now sincerely ashamed of yourself? The people you were going to steal from now bring flowers to say they’re sorry? Doesn’t that make you feel like a slimy sub-human worm, Harold?’

Outside, Guinevere’s transparent manifestation was saying: ‘Enter little one, and talk a while.’

‘Is Animal in there?’ Maze still felt a little uncertain about the strange animal.

‘The animal’s name is Wyzen and she is my friend and will harm thee not.’

The four of them stood back from the hatchway as Maze entered, carrying her roses, guided by Guinevere’s immaterial manifestation.

Zachary was admiring Guinevere’s three-dimensional appearance. ‘Neat trick, Guinevere. Should do it more often. It suits you.’

Guinevere, who was not immune to flattery, smiled at Zachary as the Wyzen looked at Maze, and tossed her squeeze bottle aside, ready for more play. ‘Be thou still, Wyzen,’ Guinevere firmly, and allowed her manifestation to disappear as her image come up on the main screen.

Maze was delighted, and beamed, and then looked around. Seeing that Meg was the oldest woman on the bridge, gave her the flowers. ‘To you, oldest woman,’ she said.

‘Anyone laughs gets the flowers in their face, right?’ said Meg and then she smiled at Maze. ‘I’m Meg, and I’m not the oldest woman, the oldest woman is up on the screen there.’

‘Looks younger.’

‘She paints her face so she can look like that, but we’re too polite to mention it,’ Meg said. ‘Let’s see, Harold you’ve met, this is Zoe, and this person is Zachary and you don’t believe anything he says.’

‘Zachary just prettyface?’

‘You’ve got it, Maze, he’s just a pretty face. Now what can we do for you?’

Zachary looked at Guinevere on the screen. ‘Are we going to take this? I mean apart from Meg’s admission that she thinks I’m really hot, are we going to take this general bad-mouthing?’

‘Men don’t interrupt womantalk,’ said Maze sternly.

‘Oh. Right.’ Zachary said, and dropped into a couch with a broad smile on his face.

‘Now,’ said Maze to Meg. ‘Straight talk time. You say in your head that I dirty and I smell. Well you smell too, just different.’

Meg was taken aback that Maze knew what she was thinking. ‘I’m sorry, I…’

‘Woman to woman, no anger here. You say in your head now I awful brat whatever that is. I say you awful brat too, okay?’

‘Guinevere, am I right in thinking that this child is reading my mind?’

Guinevere’s voice was tinged with sadness. ‘Aye. She hath the Talent. She could be a starship.’

‘No anger, no problem, no fight, but I know what you say in your head, eldest lady.’

‘Can we drop the “eldest lady” bit? I might be getting over-sensitive but there does seem to be some kind of conspiracy about this.’

‘But to be eldest lady is best,’ said Maze, looking puzzled. ‘You want to stay child all your life? No. You want to stay young woman all your life? No. One day I will be eldest lady and be proud.’

Zoe felt the subject needed changing. ‘Okay, why don’t we all have something to eat?’ she said.

Maze smiled. She was a child of a gardening, hunting and gathering people, and rule #1 was never to refuse a chance to eat. This was also rule #2.

‘Always worked with my little sister Helena,’ said Zoe, as bottles of blue gruel and khaki biscuits started coming out of the food and drink slots in the main console.

On the male side of the red line which crossed Our Mother’s floor, Marlowe sat cross-legged. ‘He was not Slarn,’ Marlowe was saying.

‘Nor the three others, by Maze’s report,’ said Our Mother.

‘But in a Slarn starship,’ said Marlowe.

‘You must stay away from it. I had ordered that no man should know. You must stay away from it, Marlowe. You know what happened last time.’

‘Mother, I must have it.’

‘What?’ The ancient voice sharpened. The power was still there when it was needed.

‘Whoever’s in that starship stole it from the Slarn. Thieves. But I have a right.’

‘You have no right!’ Power surged into the voice. She straightened in her chair of office. ‘If you go near that ship, you endanger the clan, the village, you’ll bring death to us, ruin all my plans, you must not go near it, I Forbid!’

Marlowe stood, and looked at her in silence.

‘The Forbid is on it, Marlowe. It is Forbid.’

‘Goodbye Mother,’ said Marlowe. ‘I’ll probably not see you again.’

She watched him walk out of the hut, out of her life, and there was a distant pain to the moment.

On the bridge of the starship, Maze put down her half-eaten ship’s biscuit with visible signs of disgust. She tried drinking the blue gruel, and the signs of her disgust, if anything, increased. ‘This horrible!’ she said. ‘You always eat this yukstuff?’

‘Lately,’ Zoe allowed.

‘Guinevere says it’s a scientifically balanced diet,’ Harold told Maze. ‘The thing I don’t understand is how a food designed for the Slarn should suit our metabolisms. I mean even if they’re a hydrogen carbon cycle lifeform…’

‘It’s muckstuff,’ Maze said.

‘And certainly they’re oxygen-breathing hominids. There are suits of their armor in there and it’s clear that they possess many physical features similar to ours…’

‘Tastes like dogdirt,’ Maze said.

‘We do like other food as well,’ Zachary said, beginning the conversation which he hoped would end in some kind of trading. ‘You know, like apples, carrots, lambchops, thick juicy T-bone steaks…’ he suddenly felt overcome with emotion.

‘Toasted bread,’ said Meg. ‘We’re very fond of toasted bread with butter and thick-cut vintage marmalade and Darjeerling tea.’

Zachary thought he could have come up with a better set of priorities than that. Darjeerling tea? He had never heard of a plant called a Darjeerling. ‘What’s a Darjeerling?’ he asked.

‘It’s a place, lunkhead. Where they grow tea.’

‘I knew that,” he said. ‘Can’t I make a joke?’

‘Hamburgers,’ said Zoe. ‘Chips.’

‘Apple pie,’ said Harold, distracted from thoughts of carbon-hydrogen cycles. ‘With ice cream. Chocolate cake,’ he drooled.

Maze watched them, knowing they wanted to trade. She lifted her hand for silence. ‘You want to deal?’ she asked.

‘Let me handle this,’ said Zachary and turned to her. ‘You know the Promise and the Law, kid, I heard you say it and I was very pleased you people have remembered it, because we’re from out of the sky, right? Sort of gods, you understand, so we don’t actually make deals with people. You bring us gifts, we do you favors. That’s the way it is with Skygods, right?’

‘I’m Greek Orthodox,’ said Maze. ‘Any more of that godscam talk and I walk away.’

‘Just testing you,’ said Zachary.

‘We get three four people a year walk in from somewhere, they’ve got some gadget-thing they looted, it makes a noise, it makes movieshow pix, they say meet the Skygods, give us your gold. We call ‘em godscammers, give ‘em to the Don.’

‘Just … matter of interest? What’s this Don do with godscammers?’

‘Swaps them to the Sullivans for horses or sells ‘em up the river into Vic as slaves.’

Zachary looked at Maze with great respect. ‘I see. Do you happen to know the concept “joke”?’

‘“Joke”. Like someone falls in the duckpond.’

‘Right!’ said Zachary. ‘Joke like someone falls in the duckpond. When I said I was a Skygod I was joking. I didn’t mean it.’

‘We don’t call that “joke”. We call that “lie”.’

‘We call it that too,’ said Meg.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Maze said: ‘You strangers who need food. What you got to swap?’

Zachary pulled out his wallet. ‘Well I’ve got about 45 bucks here, some major credit cards…’

Maze stretched out her hand and Zachary put the wallet into it. Meg was stupefied at Zachary’s idiocy. ‘This is moronic, even for you, Zachary. Don’t you realize you’re dealing with a barter system?’

But Maze was examining the money very intently. They watched as she turned the bills over in her hand, looking at each side of them. ‘This here word-writing?’ she asked.

Zoe moved so she could look over Maze’s shoulder. ‘That word says “Australia” and those are the figures for “10”. Then down here at the bottom it says “this Australian note is legal tender throughout Australia and its territories”.’

Maze handed the wallet back to Zachary. ‘In the time of my grandmother, we had a teacher but she got eaten.’

‘Lion, uh?’

Maze shook her head. ‘Looters.’

‘People?’ Zoe asked. ‘People ate your teacher?’

‘Probably Year Nines,’ muttered Meg, ‘I recognize the pattern.’

‘Looters eat people, anyone knows that,’ Maze said briskly. ‘We haven’t had a teacher since.’ She paused. ‘Teach us to read words and write them and we feed you all.’

It sounded like a very good deal, but Zoe said: ‘Can you make an agreement like that? For your village?’

Maze ran her right middle finger across her forehead, from left to right, and then across her heart. ‘Promise.’ She paused. ‘I’m anointed. When Our Mother dies, I will be Our Mother.’

The others looked at Meg, who realized she was being silently elected as teacher. ‘I don’t teach infants or primary,’ she said. ‘I’m High School English/History, I…’

‘We got a deal?’ Maze asked. ‘Teach reading-writing-words for food? Or not?’

Meg picked up a khaki-colored biscuit and looked at it glumly. ‘You have a deal,’ she said.