The Ninth Orb (6 page)

She could tell by his puzzled expression that the translation had only been partially successful, but he seemed to relax. Straightening, he glanced around as if looking for something. “You go without soldier guards?”

Eden’s brows rose. “Do I need them?”

The concept seemed to be enough to throw him into complete disorder. It strengthened her certainty that the males dominated in their society. Females, apparently, were not allowed to roam without guards.

“I offer service,” he said finally, as if he needed to do something to correct the ‘problem’.

“Thank you. Shall we go?”

The question sent him into disorder again. Apparently, these aliens were extremely formal. “On feet?”

“Didn’t you walk over?”

He gaped at her. “Yes. But I am soldier,” he responded, recovering himself. “You are queen.”

Eden studied him for several moments. “I have no desire to distress you or flout your customs, but we’re going to have to agree that you have yours and we have ours.”

He went rigid. After a few moments it dawned on Eden that it was something in the nature of a salute.

She thought.

Shrugging mentally, she struck off toward the alien encampment. After a few moments, he fell into step behind her, following, she supposed, at a respectful distance.

Her head ached after a few moments of trying to untangle the logic behind his behavior patterns. He didn’t behave in a manner that she thought of as subservient. Nor could she see that he considered himself above her. But he didn’t behave as an equal either. Maybe it was more like a class thing?

Dimly, she recalled that in Earth history there had been cultures that had very rigid, distinct classes. There was a hierarchy, naturally, and the other classes trailed like steps downward to one that was purely a servant class.

It almost seemed to fit. The aliens they’d observed certainly seemed definitively separated by stations--a worker class and soldier class. Maybe what he kept referring to as queens was actually the ruling class, not necessarily female? Maybe that was just the closest word the computer could come up with to match their word?

If she was right, then it could make trying to interact with them prickly, to say the least. She wasn’t much of a historian, but she did recall that the classes could become rather violent about crossing the line of what was considered acceptable.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea inviting them to take part in a celebration when they understood so little about these aliens?

She was missing a very good opportunity to learn more about him … and his people, of course. She stopped, turning to address him. He stopped, eyeing her questioningly.

“We could talk if you would walk beside me.”

He merely stared at her. She could see his mind turning that over, however. He seemed to view the request with suspicion. “This is test?”

Surprise and puzzlement flickered through her. It occurred to her after a few moments, though, that his suspicions/anxieties must be custom oriented. Was he forbidden to speak with the queens because he was a soldier? Speak unless spoken to? Or maybe, although she’d thought it was merely to take up a guard position, he wasn’t supposed to walk beside her as if he were a social equal? “I would like to learn more about you--uh--your people.” She tapped the headset. “And this can not be relied upon to correctly and efficiently translate for us until the computer has assimilated a broader vocabulary in your language.”

His brows rose and for a moment a sense of disorientation swept through her. It was such a human expression she wondered for the first time just how different they could really be. When all was said and done, human emotions, and human personality traits were actually very limited. Excepting the social customs, which obviously differed a good deal and would certainly effect how his brain translated these personality traits, and his emotions, wasn’t it fairly safe to suppose they were as similar in that way to humans as they were physically?

A faint smile followed his look of surprise. “I am not accustomed to speaking much. It is not encouraged among soldiers for obvious reasons and it is not really necessary much of the time. I know what I must do. The others also. I will make a special effort to please you.”

Eden couldn’t help it. She blushed. He was certainly not trying to flirt with her, she was sure, but the smile and the comment together set all of her receptors to clamoring and she found herself smiling back at him.

He looked away after a moment, reddening uncomfortably, and Eden felt a welling of amusement. He was shy? This great, hulking warrior who looked so unnervingly fierce?

The suspicion charmed her, prompting the contrary side of her nature to tease him. “That was three or four whole sentences, at least. I think you’re getting the hang of it.”

He sent her a puzzled look and she sighed. Apparently, the tease didn’t translate that well. Turning away again, she began walking. He shortened the distance between them, but it was impossible to ignore the fact that he remained at least a pace behind her at all times. Habit, she supposed. “Did you and your people clear this area of vegetation? Or is this a natural meadow?”

He was studying the area when she glanced back at him. “The workers. I am a soldier.”

Since that conversational gambit obviously wasn’t going any where, she changed the subject. “Where is your world?”

“Here.”

She glanced back at him with a frown. “The place you called Xania.”

“Xtania,” he corrected her, lifting his head skyward as if searching for it. “It can not be seen now. At night, it appears there.”

A shock wave went through Eden. “The moon?”

He frowned. The word had not translated at all, she realized. “The body that revolves around this one?” she persisted.

“Yes.”

A chill swept through her. Right in their backyard! Sweat popped from her pores directly behind the wave of cold. It took an effort to try to pretend to be unconcerned, but her thoughts were so chaotic she had no idea if she was even faintly successful. The urge to contact Ivy immediately and alert her to the possible threat was so strong she felt almost dizzy with it, but she couldn’t allow him to see how much his announcement had alarmed her. A little frantically she searched her mind for something to say to keep from leaving him with the impression that his announcement had sent her into panic--which it had.

“The colonists have been working very hard,” she said finally. “We’ve decided to celebrate ….” She broke off when she realized that word hadn’t translated either. Besides, she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to tell him what they were celebrating. Abruptly, it didn’t seem like a good idea to tell him anything at all about them, and certainly not to allow him, or any of the others, to see the colony. They might already have guessed that there were only two hundred colonists between them and complete possession, but there was certainly no sense in relieving all doubts.

He repeated the word and her head jerked toward him of its own accord. “What means this?”

She managed a smile, though it felt a little sickly even to her. “Not translatable until my computer has more of your vocabulary.”

He frowned. “Describe.”

Her smile stiffened. “I’m not sure I can.” They’d reached the stream she discovered with a mixture of relief at the distraction and alarm at the realization that the moment she crossed it she would be closer to the alien colony than her own. “Is this deep?”

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when he caught her, swinging her up into his arms. She uttered a garbled squeak of fright as he plunged into the water and waded across. Her heart was still hammering so hard in her chest when he set her on her feet again that the pulse in her head made it feel as if her skull would explode. She glanced longingly toward the safety of New Savannah--or the façade of safety it represented, anyway.

As confident as they all had been about the security fields that protected them, they began to seem woefully inadequate in light of the fact that they had an entire world of aliens hovering above their heads.

“We must hurry. Mother queen will communicate soon.”

And we certainly wouldn’t want to keep mother waiting, Eden thought with a mixture of anger and fear. She was heartily sorry now that she’d leapt into the attempt to form a peace treaty. If she’d been better informed beforehand--or less well informed now, she would be calm, or have had time to carefully deliberate what to say.

She certainly couldn’t whirl around at this point and race back. Baen probably wouldn’t even need his wings to catch her with his stride--not that she knew if they actually worked. They could be some sort of left over, now useless, genetic trait for all she knew, like the flightless birds of Earth, but they looked large enough and substantial enough to be functioning wings.

Tamping the urge to give in to hysteria, Eden collected herself the best she could as Baen hurried her toward the yawning gate in the wall of the alien fortress.

She needed to observe everything she could about the installation, she realized, assuming she would get the chance to report back.

Dismissing that wayward thought, Eden glanced around curiously as they stepped through the gate. It was dark and it took several seconds for her vision to adjust from the sunlit meadow to the dimness. She had a brief impression of precisely cut stonework before they stepped out on the other side. Glancing back, and then upward at the walls above them, she gauged the thickness of the outer wall at fifteen to twenty feet at the base. The walls rose almost pyramid-like to a narrow walkway at the top. As she examined that, trying to decide how many soldiers stood watch above them, one detached himself from a group marching in formation and dove from the parapet. Her heart skipped several beats. She realized almost immediately, however, that he’d spread his wings.

He glided to the ground in a gentle, spiraling incline, landing less than twenty feet away.

They certainly had gliding capabilities, then. It remained to be seen whether they could actually fly with the wings. Wresting her fascinated gaze from the flying man, Eden focused on the city itself. It was laid out with military precision, as precise a grid work as New Savannah, which had been designed by computers.

There were telltale signs that neither computers nor robots had constructed this structure--slight imperfections that made the certainty grow in her that the aliens had carved this place out and built it, block by block, with their own hands.

Everything was stone, the natural stone of the area, not something that looked like a manufactured amalgamation of raw materials like concrete. All of the structures were single story and none looked to be much more than ten or twelve feet squared.

The workers did not stop to gawk as she passed them, directed by Baen, who still walked several paces behind, toward the center of the city. She couldn’t help but notice, however, that their gazes followed her. Her skin prickled at the touch of so many gazes. She wasn’t certain if it was worse because they were alien, but their curiosity certainly increased her tension considerably.

At last they reached a structure near the center of the city. Eden could see nothing about it to make it remarkable from any of the others around it and wondered that Baen had directed her unerringly toward it. For herself, she thought she would have had to count the structures to single it out, but perhaps he had done so and she simply hadn’t noticed?

The door didn’t open. She stared at it blankly, wondering why, if it required Baen’s identification to open, he hadn’t come forward to do so. Even as she turned to look at him questioningly, he stepped forward with his hand outstretched, grasped a lever device and then pushed on the thick wood that barred her entrance. To her surprise, it swung inward. Puzzled, she looked the panel over as she stepped inside and saw that it was hanging from the frame that formed the opening.

It was a one room structure she saw without much surprise. Two windows had been set into the walls, one facing the rising sun, the other the setting--to maximize the natural light, she supposed. There was something transparent covering the window, similar to the materials they used for that purpose, possibly even the same material.

It was cool inside, but she saw no ductwork. The materials used to construct the structure must insulate it from the environment, she decided.

Like the cabin she’d lived in for the past fifteen years aboard the U.S.S. Plymouth, the place was almost painfully sparse, except this was worse even than her cubicle. The ‘furnishings’ were nothing more than slabs of stone of varying heights and uses, one which formed what looked like a miserably uncomfortable sleeping platform covered with moss for ‘softness’. Another formed a ‘desk’ or table and still another a seat.

No care had been taken for comfort, she saw.

On top of the desk was a bulky electronic device that began to squawk almost the moment they walked through the door.

Baen crossed the floor in two strides and snatched up a palm sized object connected to the main device by some sort of cord. “Baen.”

Eden jumped when a voice responded, startled more by the crackling background noise than the voice--whose tone and pitch were such that it could have been either male of female vocal chords producing it. Worse, the voice spoke so rapidly her translator spewed a corresponding torrent that was more than half gibberish. About half way through the dialogue, Eden noticed a rectangle on top of the device began to glow. Nearly microscopic dots winked across the panel. As she moved closer, she discovered the dots formed an image.

The face was almost as androgenus as the voice, but the body wasn’t. Elongated globes hung almost to the female’s waist, which might at some time have been curved in a feminine indentation but now formed a roll beneath the breast roll and just above the belly bulge. The hips were enormous as were the creature’s thighs and every pound of flesh giggled as she spoke, breathed, made infinitesimal movements on the long chaise upon which she was settled.

She didn’t look like she could’ve moved from the chase without assistance.