Grail (5 page)

“They are definitely human?” Chelsea asked, rolling crumbs of bread between her fingertips. It took courage to ask the obvious question.

“Definitely,” Caitlin said. “The markings on the probe are in an alphanumeric system derived from our own. And my engineers believe their machinery springs from the same roots, though we have undergone centuries of technological drift.”

Cynric sipped her tea. “I am engineering a device to receive and decode them, but these things take time.”

They must be spliced, they must be hybridized. They must be grown to parturition and to enough adulthood to be useful. Even in Cynric’s hands, that might mean days. Weeks.

Cynric licked at the edges of her teeth. “What other signs of life does Grail possess?”

Caitlin was shorter and more compact than Cynric—or Benedick, for that matter. It was from him that Perceval got her rangy build, while Caitlin had broad shoulders and a solid frame. Her auburn hair curled loosely about her nape and ears, cut too short to brush her collar. She had gray-blue eyes, the whites flushed with the pale cobalt tint of her colony, and she favored bright, warm colors—currently, a loose-sleeved tunic in flowing vermilion over a body-tight shirt in a complementary yellow.

When she turned to Cynric, she caught Benedick’s gaze along the way and offered a small, sympathetic smile. He let out the breath he was holding. Time and useful work were healing
those
wounds, at least.

And speaking of the useful work—or not speaking of it, as the case might be—it was time he was about it.

“Nova reports no structures of gross scale.” And lesser ones would not yet be detectable. “But that’s at this distance, which tells us only that they don’t have continental
arcologies and they don’t have an orbital elevator.” He took a bite of the high-protein bread, careful not to drip the oil down his face. Though it was a breakfast meeting, and they were all family here, it didn’t hurt to present an adult appearance—or the facsimile of one. “Nova did spot one interesting bit of geography, though.”

Obligingly, the Angel—who was not present as an avatar, but was listening, as was her duty—popped up a crudely surveyed, low-resolution globe. Grail was second out from its home sun. It had a secondary, like Earth—and like Earth, it was the larger twin—but the smaller planet didn’t appear in this simulation.

“It’s so
colorful
between the oceans.” Chelsea leaned forward over the table, her dark hair falling in waves beside her long, angular face. Her mouth had dropped open slightly in concentration as she peered at the patterns of violet-black, red-black, swirled white, and azure. She cocked her head to the left. “Is that vegetation?”

While suffering the throes of memory, Benedick indulged himself in a more pleasant one: a brief interlude in a mad dash through the bowels of the world that he and Chelsea had undertaken, where they had met a colony of sapient, carnivorous orchids and been introduced to an archive of films from Earth, including footage of the homeworld’s mighty oceans. He imagined that Chelsea, too, was recollecting those images. The surface-level pictures had revealed oceans tinted glass green by algae and azure by reflection from the deep skies above. These oceans appeared similar, allowing for some astronomical units of difference in perspective.

But the landmasses of Earth as seen from space had been different. They’d been greener, and browner, with great swathes of tan and umber through the haze of atmosphere.

“Analysis of the reflection spectrum indicates it’s photo-synthetic,” Caitlin said. “So yes, it’s plants. Purple and black plants. Very efficient sunlight collectors. Grail’s sky is
probably blue, based on atmospheric haze, ocean color, and still more spectrographic analysis. From here, the air looks breathable, though it’s an extremely rich mix by our standards. Benedick, you were about to …?”

Benedick beckoned, zooming the globe in until a blurry bit of detail on the smaller of two southeastern continents became visible. A circle, perfect as a water splash, reflecting the blue skies above.

Jsutien said, “Impact crater.”

“Fresh. Less than a hundred and fifty years old. Lingering traces of radiation.”

“Damn,” said Jsutien. “Guess they really blew the dismount.”

Danilaw pulled his work coat off the hook on the inside of his office door when they walked past. As he and Captain Amanda stepped into the conference room—and Karen paused to wait outside—he shrugged into it, head bent. He could feel the frown on his face and wanted to hide it from Captain Amanda and his cabinet members until he had it under control. It was a frown of unease, not displeasure—but a responsible leader understood that those around him reacted to his moods and to those unconsciously perceived cues that told one to walk softly because the silverback was angry. A frown would upset them, and he needed his team focused on the problem—not on appeasing, avoiding, or supporting him, as their various natures might demand.

Captain Amanda latched the door quietly, letting everybody know that this was serious business. The City Council did not usually meet behind closed doors. The conference room was pleasant, airy, conducive to work without ostentation or extravagance, though it, too, had a
couple of lake-view blisters—also empty of any dodecapodal observers.

The central table was the one element likely to impress, but that was due to it being a state-of-the-art piece of technology rather than to any calculated effect. A thick memory crystal embedded with data arrays, a solid-state quantum teleconferencing system, holographic displays, recorders, and other useful and interesting devices, it had the appearance of a palm-thick, armspan-wide slab of pale violet glass threaded with circuits and guide panels. The array rested atop four graceful C-shaped ceramalloy legs, like something that trembled on compressed springs. But it was solid as rock—and heavy as one, too, as Danilaw clearly remembered from the work party he’d hosted to move the damned thing in here. Even blunting the gravity hadn’t made that project easy.

The secondary task of carrying in the chairs had been handled by Danilaw’s sister’s kids, since it had been his day to watch them. Good life experience, and a few community service credits toward their citizenship, combined with a family outing. Sometimes, laziness was the next best thing to genius.

Two Administrators waited behind the table. The citizen on the right was Jesse Corelio, with his nut-brown hair and pale olive complexion—a tidy medium-sized young citizen serving his first stint as a Councilor. He wasn’t using a chair. He perched, legs drawn up, in an observation blister. A mathematician and farmer, he’d passed the suitability tests with flying colors, and so far Danilaw had enjoyed working with him, but the relationship hadn’t been tested yet.

On the left was Gain Kangjeon, whose hair was as black and straight as Amanda’s, though her skin was paler and her eyes creased at the corners by epicanthic folds. She was bigger than Jesse, broad-shouldered and broad-hipped. Danilaw, in particular, liked her hands. They were lean—not
elegant, but capable—with defined tendons across the back. When she wasn’t serving out her Obligation, she was a primary musician, with civil service as her secondary. Danilaw thought maybe, when their term of Administration Obligation was up and there was no longer a conflict of interest, he’d ask her if she was interested in a date.

He wouldn’t mind if she even wanted more than a date, although he couldn’t imagine that she didn’t have half a dozen potentials already bidding on her reproduction contracts. And there was the marketability issue of his genetic disadvantage.

By the time Danilaw settled the work coat’s collar around his neck—a smidgen too tight; his predecessor had not been such a muscular man, but the coat fit otherwise, so there was no reason except vanity to replace it—Danilaw had his face under control. He surveyed the room, assessing the citizens assembled, their strengths and weaknesses, and that let him offer a small, honest smile.

Danilaw liked to handle briefing his staff personally when possible. He thought it led to increased rapport.

“Administrators, posterity”—he acknowledged the recording device—“this is Captain Amanda Friar, of the research scull
Quercus
. She’s an expert in antique Earth cultures, among other things.”

Amanda pulled out his chair and her own, and they both sat. Jesse drew his legs up higher into his bubble, while Gain seemed composed and at ease in a chair. If they shared a glance, it was a concerned, collegial one.

Danilaw folded his hands in front of him and drew in a focusing breath, arranging his report in his head before he began to deliver it. “Captain Amanda informs me that an antique ship, possibly derelict, is headed in-system.”

The faces of his colleagues reflected a host of emotions. Not disbelief—there was no reason for Danilaw to summon them to a midnight meeting in order to lie to them—but concern, confusion, and shock. He saw it in the way
Gain sat straighter and Jesse hunched tighter, grasping his ankles in his crossed palms.

Gain was the closer to impassive, and even she blinked and frowned. He could tell, from the way the tiny muscles of her face rearranged themselves afterward, that she was having a conversation with herself not dissimilar to his own earlier worries. And that she was already considering implications and opportunities.

While he, Danilaw, was stalling.

If you can’t figure out a better way to get there
, Danilaw told the self-critical voice,
just jump right in
.

He picked up a hand pointer and used it to illuminate the blip, which caught the light and sparkled like a faceted stone against the empty spaces of the hologram. He glanced down from the glitter—the instinct bred of old experience rather than necessity.

“We have reason to believe,” he said, “that the object indicated by that icon is a sublight colony ship from Earth, which has been lost and presumed destroyed since the time of the Kleptocracy.”

He paused to let the centuries stretch out in his audience’s mind. A rustle as Jesse shifted, restless, told him he had waited long enough. Jesse was an autist, one of the protected mutations, and he’d chosen to retain his neuroatypical status. He did not deal well with boredom. Danilaw tried to accommodate him as much as possible.

“We’re not expecting anything incoming from Earth this year, and there’s been no communication suggesting otherwise. Captain Amanda assures me she has people checking with the home planet right now.”

Outside, the dodecapodes were finally arriving, drawn by light and activity. A tentacle as long and thick as a big man’s leg glided sinuously across the transparent material of the blister behind Jesse. It coruscated in bands and leopard spots of violet and black, brilliant to Earth-adapted
eyes but ideal for vanishing into the dappled shadows of Fortune’s underwater vegetation.

Danilaw would have liked to measure the width of the dodecapus’s arm against his palm, but he thought it would forgive him the lack of a proper greeting this one time. A sense of awe, of connection and affection, swelled in him, and he frowned. Time to get his rightminding adjusted, before something in there cascaded.

He said, “The vessel is using old-style broadband casting to send out an identity tag. After rounding up some obsolete radio equipment and contacting some experts in archaic languages, Captain Amanda has been able to associate those tags with a sublight colony ship that left Earth during the Kleptocracy.”

He glanced at her.

She picked up the thread as if they had rehearsed it. “There are a number of possibilities. The ship may be broadcasting a false ID tag. It may be the vanguard of some sort of attack. It may be a derelict, under remote control or AI guidance—or just drifting, in which case it is merely an archaeological treasure and a hazard to navigation.”

“But setting aside those possibilities for the moment”—Danilaw paused for emphasis, and to get his breath under his words so he would sound calm and capable—“Ciz, it is entirely likely that we are about to reestablish contact with the
Jacob’s Ladder
, a vessel whose notoriety should require no exposition.”

It might not require it but, if necessary, the exposition was there, keyed into every attendee’s infothing and available for perusal at the slide of a finger. Both of the Councillors ducked their heads, flicking through the information while Danilaw paused to let what he’d just said sink in. Yet despite that, Danilaw was confident that all three of his colleagues knew the basics.

And if they didn’t know the history, they’d have heard of the legends. The
Jacob’s Ladder
showed up regularly as a
plot point in fashionable entertainments, cast in the role of an enclave of fanatics, an insane asylum, and a lair of monsters all in one.

It was a trope so hoary and reliable that Danilaw thought of it as a predictable cliché. So he folded his arms on the table and tried not to feel like a character in a drama. The holographic representation in the center of the table helped. Watching the nearly invisible blip that was the
Jacob’s Ladder
’s estimated position float apparently motionless in a 3-D model of the Sanctuary system made it seem manageable, a crisis on a human scale.

“Which means,” said Gain, her voice crisp with authority and good sense, “we are in all likelihood also about to reestablish contact with unrightminded, primitive humans. Possibly a large number of them.”

“Barbarians,” Captain Amanda agreed. “It may be impossible to relate to them without conflict.”

“
Barbarians
is a loaded term,” Danilaw said, “and one I’d prefer to avoid. They’re premodern humans.”