First contact, p.23
First Contact, page 23
“And they’d be the sensible ones,” Sean said. “Do you mean to say this has happened before?”
“Otherworldly visitors have come to this planet,” she said. “There was an ancient time, before my arrival, when it was very common. In recent years, I have discouraged visitors. This instance was different because I had no warning of their arrival. I have machines above the planet, looking for starships. But they did not see the arrival of that killer. It is an interesting development. What do you seek, Sir Sean?”
“It’s just Sean. I’m no titled gent.”
“But who, other than a knight, could slay a mythical beast?”
“He was a person, not a myth. We’ve plenty more like him in these lands, albeit of a pinker hue. Me, I’m just a fetch-and-carry assistant to Sir John. I guard his house in London, and I guard him when we hunt out stories for his penny dreadfuls. But I’ve written a couple of stories, too.”
“The Ghost of Patrick O’Rourke,” she said.
“You’ve read it?”
“Among my other duties, I am a librarian,” she said. “Was your publisher with you to verify the veracity of your tale? Is that what you wish, to publish all that you saw?”
“Sir John’s not a bad sort for a toff, even if some of his ancestors could have competed with the Ripper for villainy,” Sean said. “They got their money from stealing land and selling people, but his money comes from shipping and finance. He funds inventions and innovation, but enjoys publishing as much as I enjoy writing. I think he came with me out of curiosity.”
“Do you wish to publish today’s events?” she asked.
“No one would believe me,” Sean said.
“We could take the corpse atop this carriage to the Royal Society,” Celeste said. “I can guarantee they will believe your tale. Is that what you wish?”
Sean looked out the window of the still stationary carriage at the filth-coated road, dilapidated buildings, and the drawn faces of the life-battered denizens wearily trudging by.
“Does it matter what I wish?” Sean asked. “We can dream and scheme, but sometimes the best we can hope for is a little comfort at the end of a hard day.”
“It does matter,” she said. “I have walked this world for two thousand years, and walked many more worlds before. I have seen civilisations rise, fall, and be forgotten. Believe it as truth when I say there are occasional moments where the future of everyone turns on a single act. This is one of those times. Should the galaxy remain as it was a year ago, or should it change?”
“How can I decide that?”
“By deciding what you want,” she said. “But there is no rush. This carriage will drive itself, but arouses less suspicion when a driver sits by the reins. If you would be so kind?”
He got out and climbed onto the cab. The horses began walking before he touched the reins. They were odd beasts, these magnificent mares with their shimmering obsidian manes. Beautiful, but perhaps too beautiful, because he couldn’t hear their shoes clatter on the cobbles. Their legs moved, but the hooves passed through the road rather than pushing against it. He was well and truly through the looking glass now.
Celeste had said she’d walked the Earth for over two thousand years, so how many others, in years past, had thought of her and her tricks as magic rather than science? Assuming it was science. Were there others like her on Earth? How many like the Ripper? How many butchers who had then become kings were not born of this world? How many monsters of myth were explained as really being otherworldly visitors? The answers appeared to be his for the taking, but what of the answer to her question? What was it that he wanted?
Yes, of course he wanted to know, but knowledge didn’t fill a belly. All his reading as a child hadn’t saved him from having to flee his home to find work. It hadn’t saved so many ancestors from choosing death on some faraway battlefield as an alternative to lingering starvation. The search for knowledge had saved him from utter despair during his years living in the slums, but he owed his escape to chance, his fists, and the beneficent gratitude of an earl after he’d saved Sir John from a lethal robbery. Well, yes, when he thought of it like that, he knew exactly what he wanted, but he might as well wish for paradise.
The carriage came to a final halt at the very edge of the sandpit in Horsell Common. He climbed down while Celeste floated out from the cab.
“Those horses aren’t real, are they?” Sean said.
“Like my form, they are a simulacrum,” Celeste said. “It is a projection of what people expect to see.”
“There aren’t many people in London who expect to see an African wearing more diamonds than Victoria has in her crown.”
“They are merely rocks,” she said.
“No,” Sean said. “You said you can pick your form. If you can look like anyone, you could look like Sir John, or some other gent. That would go unnoticed. Your appearance is a choice.”
“Choice is a truly rare gem on this world,” she said. “Perhaps it is more accurate to say that my form is a habit. I have spent much of my time in Africa, as it was the centre of civilisation for so long.”
“Are you really two thousand years old?” he asked.
“I am much older, but have been here since one hundred and forty-three years before the birth of the Levantine carpenter.”
“Do you mean Jesus? Did you meet him?”
“That is often the first question people ask,” she said.
“Which isn’t an answer,” he said.
“Because we don’t know each other well enough,” she said. “The answer wouldn’t alter your faith. It never does.”
“Who else did you know?” he asked.
“So many,” she said. “And I remember them all, on this world, and on other worlds.”
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“For so many millions of years, across so many stars, I and my kin built civilisations. I interfered. I ruled. I was worshipped. I was loved. I was hated. I grew tired of it. I became a teacher, but for most beings, life is too fleeting to hear the smallest fragment of what I’ve learned. Hearing isn’t learning. Learning isn’t understanding. Understanding isn’t knowing. So I turned to my own kind to find students. I sent one here, fifty thousand years ago, to observe whether beings could develop agriculture, science and mathematics, poetry and art if there were no visitors from the stars to guide them along the journey. That student prevented interference on Earth from more advanced species, until he was murdered. That was in the city of Alexandria in the year one-hundred-and-forty-three Before Carpenter.”
“Before… you mean B.C. You did meet him, didn’t you? Was he… I mean, is he…?” Sean stumbled on the question, uncertain how to ask it, and even more uncertain whether he wanted an answer.
“He was truly a unique soul,” Celeste said. “And that is all I shall say on the subject at present. After the death of my student, I continued his work. I was a deterrent to those who would interfere with this world, but I placed upon myself the same constraints as my student had before me. I would not interfere directly. I would be a guide, not a god. While I might advise and assist local heroes, I would not choose their path, or that of the species.”
“So you could have killed the Ripper, but because of your vow, you wanted me to do it. But you have those bees, and they attacked when it looked like we’d lose.”
“All rules are subject to interpretation,” Celeste said. “If you had been unwilling to accept the quest, I would have found someone else to complete it. Whoever accepted it would have succeeded. It would be to them that I offered a prize of wealth, comfort, and success. For you, because you were first given the quest by the towani, I will allow you to choose your prize.”
“Who are the grey-skins?” Sean asked.
“They are an empire,” she said. “They span many worlds, and many peoples.”
“Some look like earless rabbits, and some like lizard-headed monsters,” Sean said.
“And there are many members of the empire with even more varied appearances,” she said. “It was inevitable they would, one day, come here. Now they have arrived, you must decide whether they should leave.”
“What happens to them if I decide they can’t leave?”
“They can remain here on Earth, and in exile,” Celeste said. “Or they can return to their world with the body of the Ripper. If they return, they will do so with the knowledge that Earth exists. More will come.”
“More like the Ripper, or more like Hakon and Davir?”
“To answer that would require foretelling the future. I may be long-lived, but I experience time in the same direction as you. I can predict, with certainty, more ships will come. They will land. They will be seen. Your world will change. This will happen regardless of what you decide, but if this ship, and corpse, does not return to the imperial homeworld, if all three are deemed lost in space, then it may be centuries before those ships arrive. I would add one note of caution in that I was unaware of the Ripper’s arrival. They have developed a technology I cannot see from a distance. It is possible it was designed to evade my detection. In which case, they could arrive at any time. So, considering the uncertainty, and the myriad possibilities it brings, I return to the question of your prize. What is it you want?”
“Sir John will talk,” Sean said. “He’ll probably publish.”
“Will anyone believe him?” Celeste asked.
“I mean to say I can’t go back to my old job,” Sean said. “If I return to Sir John’s employ, it will be a very different variety of work. No, I’ll have to leave London, and him. I suppose I could return to Ireland and see if there’s work for me as a baker.”
“Is that what you want?”
“What I want? I don’t want tomorrow to be just like yesterday. I want a place where people don’t have to live in fear of famine. I want a world where the best opportunity isn’t to leave. I want the justice we’re told about on Sunday, but which is denied us the week through. A man should be able to wake knowing a day’s labour will feed his family, and go to bed knowing he has guaranteed work tomorrow. I want our lives to be our own, not dictated by an absentee landlord or an indifferent parliament.”
“Those are noble goals,” she said. “And yes, it would be a fitting prize, though I can only grant you the tools with which to pursue it, but without guarantee of success. Board the ship when it arrives. Return with the towani to their homeworld. If you do that small thing, everything will change, for better and worse, irrevocably, and more than you can imagine. This will be the first step on the journey towards your desired prize. Will you accept the quest, Sir Sean?”
He had only to think of the children of Whitechapel to know the answer. “You say better and worse, but I can’t see how things can get much worse.”
“Then I shall not tell you,” Celeste said. “Their ship won’t arrive until dark. I have food. We shall eat, and we shall discuss the story you wrote.”
An hour after sunset, the discus-shaped ship landed in the sandpit. As the sand settled, the ramp descended. Hakon and Davir walked out together.
“Wait here,” Celeste said, and floated her way across to the pair.
Davir bowed. Hakon appeared frozen in fear. They spoke, and in the towani tongue in which Celeste appeared fluent.
Davir dropped to all fours on the ramp. Celeste stepped back. Hakon picked up her comrade, and helped him down the ramp. For the first time, they set foot on terrestrial soil. Again, Davir fell to his knees, though not in shock. He dug his hands deep into the soft sand, letting it cascade through his fingers before bringing up more, showering himself with the golden soil. He lowered his face to the ground. His eyes went to the trees, but when Celeste spoke, Davir stood, though with obvious reluctance. He hurriedly bent down again to grab a fistful of sand before he and Hakon returned to the ramp. Celeste returned to Sean.
“What did they say? What did you say?” Sean asked.
“They apologise for the confusion,” Celeste said. “They expected you to identify the Ripper’s hiding place, but to then wait until nightfall so they could land and capture the killer.”
“They wanted him alive?” Sean asked.
“They wanted to bring him to trial,” Celeste said. “His body will suffice. It is not as important as the knowledge they are now returning with.”
“What knowledge is that?” Sean asked.
Celeste walked around to the back of the carriage. One-handed, she lifted down a large mahogany chest. “Your answers are in here,” Celeste said. “Davir had his suspicions after he examined your blood. I have confirmed them. Davir will now take you back to Towan III. Afterwards, he will ensure you are returned here. You may still decline this quest.”
“And if I go, I’ll change the world?” Sean asked.
“You will change the galaxy,” she said.
Chapter 30 - Where No Man Has Gone Before
Aboard the ship, Sean sat on the bed in his small cubicle looking at the mahogany box that took up far too much of the space. Once again, he’d lost track of time. He’d also lost his new set of clothes and was back in the towani’s close-fitting space-garb.
Davir had disappeared almost before Sean had boarded the ship. After Hakon had helped him carry the corpse aboard, and then helped him carry the mahogany trunk to the cabin, she’d piloted the ship up into the infinite blackness that began beyond the sky. He’d watched from what he assumed was Davir’s seat in a two-chair cockpit in which he’d never been before. For his benefit, as she never seemed to look at them, Hakon had the tubular chamber’s viewing-windows show views from above and below the craft.
It was the most wondrously disconcerting, unnaturally natural sensation watching the sky turn to space, but before he had time to properly marvel at it, she ushered him to the ship’s washbox. The enclosed cubicle was another true marvel, in that it sluiced, soaped, soaked, and steamed spots he’d not known he had, and all in a matter of minutes. Afterwards, he didn’t feel clean as much as cooked.
Hakon had demonstrated how a wave of the bracelet on his wrist could open doors. As curious as he was as to learn what else it could do, he was more curious still about the mahogany box.
Inside, he found a sheet of blue silk. Beneath that were books. Most were scientific, published in English, and printed in London. From their appearance, they had never been read.
Celeste must have purchased them in the time between their two meetings, and for this very purpose. But what purpose did they have other than to be read? Instead of the answers he’d been promised, he’d been given another riddle.
The first book he picked up was On the Origin of Species. Beneath was an atlas in which had been placed a blue silk ribbon. He opened the atlas, and found the ribbon marked a page showing a map of Germany. Near the city of Dusseldorf, a red ink circle surrounded the Neander Valley. A quick check of the atlas didn’t show any other circles.
Another blue-ribbon bookmark marked a page in a collection of papers published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. An old collection, too, from 1864. The blue silk ribbon marked a paper written by William King titled The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal.
Sean slowly made his way through the article, pausing over the sketch of a partial cranium. The next book, another collection of journal articles, was written in German. The ribbon, here, marked a page with a sketch of a skeleton and another sketch showing what its former owner, an ancestral human relative they called a Neanderthal, must have looked like. The too-simian face had far too much hair and too little wisdom, yet the similarities with Hakon and Davir were unmistakable.
“That’s who you are,” Sean said aloud. “That’s why she gave me these books. But what does it mean?”
With the book under his arm, he waved his bracelet at the door and stepped out into the corridor, beginning a hunt for Hakon and Davir. Hakon found him first as she sprinted along the corridor.
Sean hurriedly stepped aside so she could continue on her way to whatever pressing emergency had her dashing about the craft, but she stopped, running in place for a few steps before raising a splayed hand in front of her chest in casual salutation.
“I’ve something to show you,” Sean said. Knowing the words wouldn’t be understood, he opened the book of German academic papers to the article with the illustration. Hakon looked at it, then at Sean. She nodded, but didn’t seem surprised.
“Celeste told you,” Sean said. “I don’t suppose she told you what it all means?”
One page at a time, one day after another, Sean read aloud from the books Celeste had provided. An illustrated compendium of the history of warfare had a sketch of a clipper, from which he was able to give names to parts of the starship. From the atlas, and a spinning photograph of Earth, he taught her geographical features like oceans and mountains, rivers and towns. A mathematical primer gave them numbers, measurements, and basic operations.
As he spoke, a listening machine recorded his speech. Soon, it was able to pick out the words he said when in casual conversation with himself. But to turn a vocabulary list into a dictionary required context. For that, they used moving photographs taken of Earth, and of a dusty, barren planet he soon came to realise was Hakon’s home.
Though she’d been born in the gleaming capital, soon after the brutal slaying of her mother, she had gone to a red-soil planet that recalled descriptions of Australia, though the wildlife on this other world was even more bizarre.
The first moving picture showed a much younger Hakon. A child, not many years older than she’d been during that footage of the Ripper’s attack. Sean was still deciphering towani facial expressions, but he would describe the girl’s as putting on a brave face. She was speaking to the camera, giving a tour of her quarters. They were mostly grey and drab. Two cabinet-bunks took up one wall of a small room with a table, and two chairs, both padded with loose blankets. There was no chimney or fireplace, but there was a window beyond which was a swirling pink dust cloud. A shelf contained a collection of pink rocks and purple feathers. She opened a wall cupboard to reveal a small selection of clothes. Another cupboard contained what might have been tools. She didn’t open the third and last, but took the camera on a tour of a small side-room which contained a washbox and one of their water closets. Another door led to a row of cabinets and a food machine. Finally, she turned to the last wall, and to a glass cabinet in which seedlings struggled beneath an artificial light. The doors of the lower bunk suddenly opened, and a supremely grumpy-looking boy dragged himself from his bed. He was tall and lanky, but probably not much older than her. His name was Dannan, and after much back and forth, and a few stick-figure sketches, Sean gathered he was Hakon’s brother.
