Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition)
Read Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) Online
Authors: C. J. Cherryh
Raves for
Foreigner
.“This polished and sophisticated tale addresses the complicated issue of how humans might have to compromise to survive on a planet where they are barely tolerated by the original, humanoid inhabitants. Three-time Hugo-winner Cherryh’s gift for conjuring believable alien cultures is in full force here, and her characters, including the fascinatingly unpredictable atevi, are brought to life with a sure and convincing hand. Serious space opera at its very best.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)“A seriously probing, thoughtful, intelligent piece of work, with more insight in half a dozen pages than most authors manage in half a thousand.”
—
Kirkus“A large new novel from C. J. Cherryh is always welcome. When it marks her return to the anthropological SF in which she has made such a name, it is a double pleasure, The ensuing story is not short on action, but stronger, (like much of Cherryh’s work) on world-building, exotic aliens, and characterization. Well up to Cherryh’s usual high standard.”
—The Chicago
Sun-Times“Veteran SF/fantasy author Cherryh plays her strongest suit in this exploration of human/alien contact, producing an incisive study-in-contrast of what it means to be human in a world where trust is nonexistent.”
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Library Journal“A typically close-grained and carefully constructed world, filled with arresting details of atevi life and history. The long and deliberate setup pays off more than satisfactorily, but without any sense of a pat or closed-off solution. A book that will stick in the mind a lot longer than the usual adventure romp.”
—
Locus
DAW Titles by
CJ. CHERRYHTHE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE
FOREIGNER PRECURSOR INVADER DEFENDER INHERITOR EXPLORER
DESTROYER CONSPIRATOR PRETENDER DECEIVER DELIVERER BETRAYER
*THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE
REGENESIS
DOWNBELOW STATION
THE DEEP BEYOND Omnibus:
Serpent’s Reach
|
Cuckoo’s Egg
ALLIANCE SPACE Omnibus:
Merchanter’s Luck
|
40,000 in Gehennna
AT THE EDGE OF SPACE Omnibus:
Brothers of Earth
|
Hunter of Worlds
THE FADED SUN Omnibus:
Kesrith
|
Shon’jir
|
KutathTHE CHANUR NOVELS
THE CHANUR SAGA Omnibus:
The Pride of Chanur
|
Chanur’s Venture
|
The Kif Strike Back
CHANUR’S ENDGAME Omnibus:
Chanur’s Homecoming
|
Chanur’s LegacyTHE MORGAINE CYCLE
THE MORGAINE SAGA Omnibus:
Gate of Ivrel
|
Well of Shiuan
|
Fires of Azeroth
EXILE’S GATEOTHER WORKS
THE DREAMING TREE Omnibus:
The Tree of Swords and Jewels
|
The Dreamstone
ALTERNATE REALITIES Omnibus:
Port Eternity
|
Wave Without a Shore
|
Voyager in Night
THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF CJ CHERRYH
ANGEL WITH THE SWORD*
Coming soon in hardcover from DAW Books
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER
375 Hudson Street, New York, NW 10014
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
http://www.dawbooks.com
Copyright © 1994 by C.J. Cherryh
New introduction Copyright © 2004 by C.J. Cherryh.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Michael Whelan
www.michaelwhelan.com
.
DAW Book Collectors No. 941.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).
All characters in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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First Anniversary Printing, December 2004
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES —MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
I set about originally with a sketch—I draw—of Banichi, which actually ended up in Michael Whelan’s hands. Novels start all sorts of ways, and this one had been a fragment that nagged me. I wasn’t going to include the first scenes at all, but Betsy Wollheim, my editor at DAW, told me I should, and I think she was right. And it just was so interesting to write that I kept going. Readers have been kind enough to create websites, and art, and all manner of things—search “Shejidan” on the web and you’ll find a great site. And Banichi and Jago have gotten more fanmail than I would have believed. Thank you so much, readers! I haven’t run out of ideas, and Bren’s job keeps producing trouble of every sort.
I am at work on yet another in the ongoing story, and I am as interested as the next person to find out what these folk are up to.
—C.J. Cherryh
Spokane, 2004.
I
t was the deep dark, unexplored except for robotic visitors. The mass that existed here was Earth’s second stepping-stone toward a strand of promising stars; and, for the first manned ship to drop into its influence, the mass point was a lonely place, void of the electromagnetic chaff that filled human space, the gossip and chatter of trade, the instructions of human control to ships and crews, the fast, sporadic communication of machine talking to machine. Here, only the radiation of the mass, the distant stars, and the background whisper of existence itself rubbed up against the sensors with force enough to attract attention.
Here, human beings had to remember that the universe was far wider than their little nest of stars—that, in the universe at large, silence was always more than the noisiest shout of life. Humans explored and intruded against it, and built their stations and lived their lives, a biological contamination of the infinite, a local and temporary condition.
And not the sole inhabitants of the universe: that was no longer possible for humans to doubt. So wherever the probes said life might exist, wherever stars looked friendly to living creatures, humans ventured with some caution, and unfolded their mechanical ears and listened into the dark—as
Phoenix
listened intently during her hundred hours traverse of realspace.
She heard nothing at any range—which pleased her captains and the staff aboard.
Phoenix
wanted to find no
prior claims to what she wanted, which was a bridge to a new, resources-rich territory, most particularly and immediately a G5 star designated T-230 in the Defense codebooks, 89020 on the charts, and mission objective, in the plans
Phoenix
carried in her data banks.
Reach the star, unlimber the heavy equipment … create a station that would welcome traders and expand human presence into a new and profitable area of space.
So
Phoenix
carried the bootstrap components for that construction, the algaes and the cultures for a station’s life-sustaining tanks, the plans and the circuit maps, the diagrams and the processes and the programs, the data and the detail; she carried as well the miner-pilots and the mechanics and the builders and processors and the technical staff that would be, for their principal reward, earliest shareholders in the first-built trading station to develop down this chain of stars—Earth’s latest and most confident colonial commitment, with all the expertise of past successes.
Optics told Mother Earth where the rich stars were. Robots probed the way without any risk of human life … probed and returned with their navigational data and their first-hand observations: T-230 was a system so rich
Phoenix
ran mass-loaded to the limit, streaking along at a rate a ship dared carry when she expected no other traffic, and when she had no doubt of refuel capabilities at her destination. She shoved the gas and dust around her into a brief, bright disturbance, while her crew ran its hundred-hour routine of maintenance, recalibrations, and navigational checks. The captains shared coffee on the last watch before re-entry, took the general reports, and approved the schedule the way the navigator, McDonough, keyed it.