The Meat Tree (2 page)

We've just gone under the shadow of one of the
solar arrays. I've heard about these old-style ships,
but never seen one before. Billions and billions of photons slam into the sail and nudge the vessel backwards. Crude, but effective. If this came from Earth, they might have combined it with that gravity-sling technique they used for a while.

It's eerie in the shadow of the heliogyro. Can't tell
if we're being watched or not. As if the old sight
lines have worn a groove in space. Fanciful, I know.
It could be centuries since anybody boarded this
vessel, but still I can feel the tug of those eyes.

Campion stood us down till tomorrow morning, so that we're fresh for the boarding. Gave me his old manual to read, as if I was interested in that antique and didn't have sub-eyelid protocols to study for my exams. Suppose I'd better look at it so as to humour
the old man. After all, we're going to be within
fifteen feet of each other while this trip lasts, so let's keep it sweet.

He

I love this part, getting my equipment prepared, not
knowing exactly what we're going to find on board.
You've got to be ready for anything. And a little bit scared that you won't be up to the challenge.

I just can't believe that they're suspending Wreck Inspections by humans and trusting that remote viewing rubbish. You need the human touch in trying to figure out what went wrong on these voyages,
especially if they're alien in origin. A computer
programme just won't get it and we'll learn nothing from the flotsam that's coming right to our doorstep. It's a treasure trove. What a criminal waste.

Sure, they're giving the girl some basic wreck
training with me, but she's a technician and just
hasn't got the cultural expertise to know what she's seeing. She seems nice enough – was even interested in my old manual – but they're basically flushing the culture of space travel out with the body fluids.

And what am I going to do in that horrible station on Mars? No, don't think about that now. Enjoy this voyage while it lasts. Think about dying later.

She

I mean, look at this stuff. It's so old it's quaint:

The high frontier represents an evolutionary departure in human culture that requires the merging of art and science, economics and technology, public and private sectors in the pursuit of free enterprise and human enrichment.

Ra-ra or what! And the headings: ‘Dress and
Appearance of Humans and Robots Aloft', ‘High
Offworld Performance', ‘Crew Prototypes of the
Future', ‘Lunar Industrialisation Possibilities'. And listen to this:

Initially, the focus should be upon human
performance, productivity, crew team morale and management for long-term space living,
including
stress reduction
. Special programmes,
some computerised, will be developed to counter­act the negative effects of an isolated, confined environment and lifestyle. Eventually
it will extend to the role of other animals who are
introduced into space habitats and settlements.

When he was young they were still carting stock
round the universe, as if you couldn't grow any
animal or vegetable tissue you wanted from stem cells. Just think of those early dogs and monkeys in orbit. Barbaric. Better not tell him that, I suppose. So easy to offend a person, especially a dinosaur like him. They get cranky in old age. Perhaps I could say something nice about the ‘Epilogue: Space Light', which is very poetic.

And I was hoping that this assignment would be fun.

3

Boarding

Joint Thought Channel 29 Jan 2210, 09:00

Inspector of
Wrecks

We're in!

Apprentice

Breathe slowly, breathe. Try not to show how frightened you are.

Inspector of
Wrecks

No disgrace in that. You'd be a fool not to be nervous at this stage. Just concentrate on moving slowly and noticing as much as you can. Now that we're out of the lock, why don't you take over?

Apprentice

How come he's breathing so slowly, as if he were taking a stroll in the park?

Inspector of
Wrecks

Don't shine it on me. Look around you. Break it down.

Apprentice

Our lights are like columns, picking out the desks of a tiny control room. Atmosphere's dense with motes.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Now you're getting the hang of it. What more? Don't be afraid of being subjective, but don't clutter the narrative.

Apprentice

By the design, the module looks like one of those retro twenty-second-century probes. But it can't be… there are space-shuttle touches, like the two-way switches they had to move manually before command functions were internalised. Look at this! You had to really mean it to switch this back and forth.

Inspector of
Wrecks

This isn't retro. It's the real thing. Look at these motherboards, they're huge!

Apprentice

That doesn't make sense. Space technology this primitive
could never have reached here from Earth. This thing
belongs in a museum. What is that?

Inspector of
Wrecks

No, it can't be. I've heard old-timers talking about something like this, but I've never seen one. I think it's something called an audio-cassette player. There's even a tape in it. Early personal entertainment system.

Apprentice

You're kidding, when technology was still outside the body! That's hilarious.

Inspector of
Wrecks

See those couches? I bet they're old VR systems.

Apprentice

VR?

Inspector of
Wrecks

Virtual Reality. Before you swallowed the nano-synaptic dream tablets for training and recreation.

Apprentice

Clunky or what!

Inspector of
Wrecks

This whole ship's an anachronism, there's no way it could have survived the journey… and yet the bot says that the
atmosphere's inhabitable. Well, we might as well start
finding out.

Right. Watch me carefully. This is one of the most important moments in any investigation. I'm going to take off my helmet and start breathing the ship's own
atmosphere. We know it's not going to kill me, but this
first intake of breath can tell you a lot, if you know what you're looking for. Pay attention.

Apprentice

So methodical. Gauntlets first, helmet second. Like taking off his head.

Inspector of
Wrecks

With the first breath, I can never be sure what I'm taking in. The dust of dead bodies. Toxins. Viruses. The gas from new life forms. One of the things I'm trying to scent is fear, and I often find it.

Apprentice

Stands there like a dog smelling food on the wind.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Shush, I need quiet.

Apprentice

Or like a sommelier, tasting the bouquet of a space vessel. Very sophisticated.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Please! You never get that first impression again, your nose becomes accustomed to the background scent in a couple of minutes. If you chat, it's wasted.

Apprentice

Sorry.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Now you have a go. Don't think, but open your brain to the scent molecules on board. What do you get?

Apprentice

I don't know…

Inspector of
Wrecks

Yes, your body does…

Apprentice

Can it be? Flowers?

Inspector of
Wrecks

What else?

Apprentice

Flowers.
And meat.

4

Entry

Synapse Log 29 Jan 2210, 20:30

Apprentice

End of a long day. Boarding was exciting, but after that Campion had me combing through the voyage log – paper, for Chrissakes! – looking for anything unusual, while he poked around the habitat module. I've had to drag out the grapho-palaeography from the back of my brain and try to make sense of the script.

But it's basically
nada
. Nothing unusual, everything as you would expect.

Inspector of
Wrecks

I never expected to see one of these early Earth exploration vessels and in such a perfect state of
preservation. It's like something in a museum. Even the hammocks are intact, as if someone just got up out of them and left them warm.

Missie's been moaning about having to decipher the ship's log, it's a history lesson for her. It'll do her good to see how space travellers in the past had to work, how uncomfortable it was.

Something's not right, though. It's all too perfect.

She

My print reading's crap but I managed to decipher that the vessel had a crew of three. One woman, two men. That must have been challenging in the days before phero-dampeners. Hard enough working with a man when we're both shielded from each other's body chemistry. Two men and one woman, must have been a recipe for disaster. What
did
they get up to?

He

Where are the bodies? Not even three piles of dust for us to analyse. No sign of forced exit, no breach in the spacecraft's hull. Nothing for us to go on.

She

And why can't we find any personal logs? Why
they thought I had to do this one voyage the old-fashioned way, I don't know, it'll be irrelevant to everything else I do.

He

That ship's such a classic, it's like something out of the manual. The paper log and the black box show
nothing out of the ordinary, and yet something
devastating happened on board. And then there's the mystery of how a vessel designed for short-haul travel ended up millions of light years from Earth. Think, think. Something's staring us in the face but we're not seeing it…

She

Can't keep my eyes open. Even that noisy reactor isn't going to keep me awake tonight. What's that scratching on the hull? Must be bits of meteorites. I'm sure I can see flashes of particles passing through my eyelids…

He

I know! The VR couches! Right in the middle of
the main cabin. They must have valued them highly to place the equipment so prominently. There may be some information to be gathered there. It's a big ask for the new girl to adapt to a strange VR, but what an education for her! Besides, she's quick on the uptake. Tomorrow, I'll take her in.

*

Joint Thought Channel 30 Jan 2210, 09:00

Inspector of
Wrecks

Now, remember, if you feel uncomfortable at all, just raise
your hand and we'll get out of the Virtual Reality Field
immediately. The Escape button's in your right glove. The important thing to recall is that this is just fantasy. There's
nothing in the programme that can hurt us, however
realistic it looks at the time. Mind you, given how old this ship is, I expect the FX will be very crude.

Apprentice

All right, all right. I expect it's no different from the neuro games we play now.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Hard to tell exactly what we're dealing with until we're in. The field could be anything. You're not claustrophobic, are you? If you are, let's note it in the Hazard log.

Apprentice

No. I'll be fine.

Inspector of
Wrecks

These old VR helmets can be quite uncomfortable. But it's more than that. We're used to VR forming itself auto
matically to our frontal-lobe profiles, so that it responds to our particular fantasy life. But when the technology started, they still had one person author the programmes, so that being inside you're more a witness than co-creator.
You have to take one of the available roles, but the parameters are set by the Mastermind. So the progression of the plot can feel very uncomfortable, especially if you're not used to it. And until we find out what kind of author we're dealing with it's hard to know what it will be like.

Apprentice

I'm sure I can manage.