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.* * * *TEN /// CALIQUE AND THE SLEEPER1Hendry awoke andopened his eyes.Sunlight, striking through the ship’s forward viewscreen, warmed his face.He was overcome with a sudden and overwhelming sense of well-being.The events on the ice-bound planet seemed a long way off.The attack of the alien militia, even though he could still feel the pain, was an event that seemed to belong to a much earlier chapter of his life.Perhaps it was the sunlight, he thought, betokening an end to their troubles—an end to their search for a habitable world.He was aware of someone beside him, curled sleeping with a hand across his chest.Then again, he thought, perhaps he felt so good because he had found Sissy Kaluchek.He sat up, careful not to disturb her.Carrelli was lying on the control couch, arms enwrapped about the curious frame, which more resembled a beetle’s chitinous outgrowth than anything mechanical.On the opposite couch, the giant lay dead and rigid, like the bas-relief of a knight on an ancient sarcophagus.Between the couches, the two lemur creatures were asleep, hugging each other.Through the viewscreen Hendry made out the serried, vertical boles of what looked like immensely tall palm trees, with the dense cover of their foliage high overhead.Carrelli was easing the ship through the forest, the snout of the vessel nosing aside tree trunks as if they were stalks of grass.Olembe was sitting against the far bulkhead, watching her.“What gives, Carrelli?” Evidently he too had just woken up.She glanced across at him.“I’ve cut the main drives.We’re hovering on auxiliaries.Havor was afraid that the Church might follow us in their own ship—well, the ship they appropriated from his people.”“Havor being the alien?” Hendry asked, indicating the dead giant.Carrelli nodded.“His people are the Zorl.They inhabited the world neighbouring the lemur’s world.The Church rule the latter.”“And our guests oppose the rule of the Church?” Hendry asked, glancing at the sleeping lemur and its mate.“So I understand,” Carrelli said.Hendry imagined life on a world where the truth, quite literally, was hidden; how might the race of a world shrouded in perpetual cloud come to any true understanding of its place in the universe?Olembe said, “What now?”“We land,” Carrelli said, “somewhere hidden from the Church ship, if they have indeed followed us.And then we explore this place.”“Perhaps,” Hendry ventured, expecting Carrelli to dash his hopes, “this might be the Earth-like world we’ve been looking for?”She smiled.“Perhaps you’re right, Joe.My telemetry says that the atmosphere’s breathable, and the temperature’s thirty Celsius.It’s too early to tell yet, but it looks good.”Olembe said, “Of course, it might be inhabited already.”“That’s always a possibility,” Carrelli conceded.“In which case we simply move along to the next one,” Hendry said, countering the African’s pessimism.“Okay,” Olembe said, “so we find a habitable world.What then? How do we work out how to get the colonists up here?”Carrelli eased the ship through the forest, staring through the screen.She said, “Our first priority should be finding somewhere suitable to settle.After that we can debate our next move.”Olembe pressed, not to be sidetracked.“It’s always best to plan ahead, Carrelli.If we only have this ship, which according to you isn’t functioning at full capacity, then it’s going to be a long hard job ferrying three thousand colonists up two tiers.”Hendry said, “You’ve forgotten the umbilicals.There might be more.”“I’m working on the assumption that we can’t rely on them,” Olembe said.“I’m looking at a worst-case scenario.”Carrelli smiled to herself.“Let’s just land and see what kind of place this is, and then consider the future, okay?”The lemurs were waking.Jacob blinked, looking around at the flight-deck, its large eyes lingering on the humans.Its gaze settled on the corpse of the alien, and it opened its mouth in a silent gesture.Hendry could only guess at what thought processes were going on behind those discus-like eyes, but he chose to interpret the alien’s reaction as grief.Beside Jacob, its friend came to its senses and sat up suddenly, clutching Jacob in evident alarm.Hendry raised a hand and smiled.“Tell them we’re friends, Gina.”Carrelli spoke to the lemurs, who replied.They conversed for a few minutes, the flight-deck filled with their high-pitched dialogue.At last the lemurs turned to stare up and out of the viewscreen.Carrelli said, “I’ve told him what we’re doing, where we are from.I don’t think he fully understands the concepts of individual planets.” She shook her head.“Which is understandable.Until a few days ago, apparently he had no idea that his world was just one of many on the helix.Their Church taught that their world was a flat platform floating in a grey void.”“Its friend seems to be finding the experience harder to accept than Jacob.”Carrelli said, “His name is Ehrin, at least that’s the phonetic equivalent.His.I suppose we’d call her his fiancée, is Sereth.Ehrin opposed the Church.As for Sereth, I get the impression that she was a believer.”Hendry regarded the two alien creatures.They were perhaps a metre tall, and were standing now, small claws touching the frame of the viewscreen as they stared out in wonder.It was difficult to conceive that they had lives as rich and complex as his own; perhaps, he thought, that was because they so resembled animals, and animals with some resemblance to terrestrial fauna.He wondered what they made of the humans, pink furless giants who until now they had never even dreamed might exist.Beside Hendry, Sissy Kaluchek yawned, murmuring to herself.She blinked up at him, smiled.“Hey, you,” she said.“Where are we?”Hendry gestured through the viewscreen.“Looks like paradise to me, Sis.And according to Gina, the air’s breathable.”“Let’s not get too carried away,” Olembe said.“For all we know this place is inhabited by man-eating sentients.”“Lighten up, for Chrissake,” Kaluchek said.He shrugged.“Look at the track record.Two races discovered, and have either held out the olive branch? One set of bastards set about killing us, the other would have done—”“So,” Kaluchek said brightly, glaring at the African, “third time lucky, yeah?”“In your dreams, girl,” Olembe murmured.They were interrupted by movement across the flight-deck.The lemur called Ehrin left the side of his partner and moved to the control couch bearing the giant’s body.He leapt up onto the couch—his movements, though he was bipedal and walked upright, as agile as those of a chimpanzee—and squatted beside the alien, gazing down at the hairless, wrinkled face.Hendry watched, confident in his correct interpretation of the creature’s reactions as those of sadness.The lemur-analogue might have been alien, his race evolved in circumstances wholly different to those that had prevailed on Earth, but there seemed to be a commonality of emotion between the two.He wondered then if this was a universal constant, and, if so, whether it might indicate the possibility that extraterrestrial races, no matter how seemingly different, might have points of contact which would augur well for the future relations between the various species that dwelt upon the helix.No doubt Olembe would call him an unrealistic romantic.Ehrin was silent, staring at the dead alien.His mouth moved silently, before he looked up and spoke to Carrelli.She nodded and replied.Ehrin lifted its paw in an indecipherable gesture and yelped [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]