With Amber Tears

by Jilly Paddock

Chapter Two: The Forbidden Place

The tape trilled as it reached the end and I turned it off before it could play through again. The screen above my head flickered down to grey and I stretched out on the fluid comfort of my bunk, my limbs leaden with pleasant inactivity.
Anna? Zenni's voice formed in my mind; a warmth, a smile and a question. He knew I'd shut off the tape from the flux in the ship's power. What are you doing? Are you awake?
I was catching up on the news - those tapes we picked up, I replied in the same silent fashion. We rarely used speech aboard Firebird, since there was little reason to disturb the quiet. I might as well have been asleep for all the diversion one can extract from the news. I know that those tapes are two months old but, believe me, we haven't missed anything at all.
It takes time for things to percolate to the outer wastes of known space, Zenni reminded. Is there really nothing of note?
I knew that his interest only extended as far as making conversation since I suspected that he'd already scanned the tapes, but after months in transit any new topic is a spice to the routine. Between the occasional forays to suitable planets when our supplies ran low or my boredom climbed to fever-pitch, our days were ordinary and empty. Most of the time we talked, between the eating, sleeping and other minutiae of human life. I counted mvself lucky to have Zenni as my sole companion; computer he might be but his interests were far wider than most flesh-and-blood people and he was perceptive and tolerant of my fluctuating moods. Even the very best of lovers or friends would soon come to blows on a craft as compact as Firebird.
You know Terra! I chuckled aloud and the sound was vivid against the silence. The trivia that passes for news there; the endless, glowing trade figures, the diplomatic visits from colony worlds, the society scandal, the protests from cranks and minority pressure groups - they might just as well forget all of it. Who would notice?
You don't want me to set up another batch then?
No way! I used the crash harness hooked along the bulkhead to pull myself up and began to flex the idleness out of my muscles. Put on some music.
Anything in particular or must I guess what you'd like to hear?
I grinned at the air of put-upon martyrdom behind his question. This was another of our staple games and to be truthful, he was becoming uncannily accurate at guessing my preferences, however wilful or fey I contrived to make them. Something old, without vocals - I can't be bothered to concentrate that hard.
The cabin filled with an exuberant classical piece, solo guitar backed by a small orchestra, so full of vitality and unashamed joy that it was difficult to resist the urge to dance along. I settled for running through my exercises in time to the music and when it had finished, asked the obvious question.
It's by Vivaldi, Zenni supplied. A digital recording made before the Dark, cleaned up and computer-polished, hence the superb quality. Apart from that I've no data, neither what the piece was called nor the name of the soloist who performed it. It's estimated that less than ten percent of that composer's total output remains extant and that's mostly in fragments.
I shut my eyes, easing my speeded breathing and slowing my heartbeat, sighing at the thought. So many gems of literature, music and art swept away, so many unsuspected treasures gone! We've lost so much and we're so terribly ignorant of what's missing. I often wonder why pre-Dark society made no effort to preserve its culture. Didn't they see the writing on the wall?
Those in power didn't believe in the threat, or didn't want to. It's a very human failing to deny the inevitability of death... Zenni would have continued but checked, sampling the down-turn of my emotions. Most of what survives from before the twenty-first century comes out of private rather than institutional collections, the legacy of individuals who cared for and loved the material so much that they were prepared to lavish effort and expense on protecting it at a time when governments had turned their backs on the issue. That's why it's such a patchwork, a pot-pourri of what ordinary people thought was important...
Let's shelve this one, I held up one hand in surrender. Too maudlin for today.
As you wish, Zenni gave way without animosity.
I slithered off the bunk and padded up to the flight-deck, all of me as bare as my feet. Our life systems kept Firebird at an appropriate warmth and humidity for naked skin to be the most convenient garment - and who was there to be modest in front of, when Zenni had seen the real me, the personality stripped bare inside my skull? We're back in real-space again, aren't we? Are we anywhere in particular?
Zenni fired up the viewscreens to show a pretty bottle-green and turquoise world, Earth-like enough to have its share of cloud-cover. I've parked us around an uninhibited planet. The system's logged under the name Sanctus and this is the fifth planet.
Seems like a good place to live, I peered at the image, trying to pick out the track of man's hand. Are you sure there's not a tiny colony here - not even the odd family of pioneers?
According to the records, the world is empty, Zenni repeated. There was once settlement here but the people were wiped out by a viral pandemic. Sanctus Five comes with a health warning - 'Don't land here, or else; be it on your own head if you set foot on the place; breathing this atmosphere can have serious and limiting effects on your future life-span; pay a visit here only if your body has a sell-by date of next week' - heavy stuff!
How long ago was the epidemic? I wondered.
I don't have a date. At a guess it's centuries rather than decades, the lack of certainty brought a hint of irritation into the feel of Zenni's thoughts. You'd think with our vaunted level of civilisation we'd take better care of our historical data and not let so much get lost or slip away unnoticed. Sometimes I could weep when I think of all the things that the human race has forgotten.
Careless of us - maybe we didn’t want to remember? I shut my eyes and sampled the aura of the world. On good days I could feel the collective consciousness of quite large areas and today I sensed the ghost-lattice of forest, fauna and flora as a misty network of rightness, as crisp, green and sweet as an apple fresh off the tree. There was nothing to suggest that people had ever set foot here.
A virgin wilderness? Zenni shared my taste of Sanctus Five. There aren't many of those left. That odd skill of yours is improving, although I still can't see a practical use for it.
Not everything I do has to be practical, I pulled back into my own skull. I like the frivolous side to my powers - it makes me feel less like a weapon.
Zenni sighed. That hang-up again? You aren't a weapon...
We were designed as one. An agent-pair is a loaded gun, a bomb primed to go off, with EI's finger on the trigger. You have to admit that all of our psionics are loaded towards destruction rather than creativity...
I think that you're applying an unnecessarily sinister moral bias to that view. Psionics is a tool, nothing more, and tools are beyond the labels 'good' and 'evil'... Zenni paused in mid-sentence, aware that he was putting spur to a sore spot. We'd had this argument over and over again, in different words, sometimes for hours, until one or both of us would stalk off into silence and sulk for an hour or two. I felt his resolution to shelve it and pass on to a less contentious subject. Why is it we always hang around in the empty places? Tell me, Anna, do you ever find that the pressure of other minds makes you feel claustrophobic? Do they intrude into your dreams when we're close to large populations?
I don't think so, I knew a serious question when I saw one and I could feel a little of his concern seeping into the link between us. Is it something we should worry about?
Not really. I've watched you while you sleep and your head's sealed up tighter than a miser's vault. You ought to be safe from anything behind such defences.
I watched the dance of Sanctus Five's weather for a while. How long is it since we made planetfall?
Near enough a month. You weren't thinking of going down there, were you?
My intuition wriggled; no words but a definite sense of the negative. I don't expect that the virus survived much longer than its last victim but no, not Sanctus Five. Let's find somewhere else.
It's your turn to choose, Zenni reminded. I picked out our last landing site and I'm not taking the blame for putting you down on such a boring world this time.
Aulas was a pit, wasn't it? I remembered the grey planet with a distinct lack of affection; a tedious, no-hoper world with ugly towns, dirty industry and no future. Now that I think of it, one item did stick in my head from the news-tape; one of the Sol-system universities is funding a new expedition to an uncontacted system. The first team touched down on the only inhabited planet ten years ago and they vanished without trace, down to the last man. I wonder if you've anything on record about the place - it's called Detreyon.
Zenni paused for a clear five seconds, dredging through the archives of his memory. I have some data and a picture of the system.
Sanctus Five was replaced by an approach shot of a triple star cluster, a triangle of suns, orange, yellow and green-tinged white. The orange star was the largest, the others twins but for the difference in hue. The trio circled in a strange, perfectly-choreographed, stately dance in time to the unheard music of the dark wastes. There were planets too - I could make out at least five in orbits that must have been a navigator's nightmare around their eccentric primaries.
Quite an oddity, isn't it? observed Zenni. There are seven planets and one is documented as being inhabited - Detreyon Two.
It must be as hot as hell! I grimaced. Do we have anything on the place?
It's logged as a Terra-like world, with gravity and atmosphere within five percent deviation. Basic carbon-based ecology with a humanoid dominant, physically Earth-standard to within three percent. The climate is extreme by our standards, most of the surface being desert, with limited open water and extensive mountain ranges. High volcanic activity, nothing else remarkable.
What are the people like?
I have no data on their culture and social set-up, he stopped to check. Sorry, Anna, there's nothing. The survey team recorded very little before they were lost. The file is tagged with a warning that the natives were xenophobic to the brink of psychosis. The population is fairly small due to the adverse climate, they live in nomadic groups and call their world Lysseya. This isn't a good place to go sightseeing; there's no out-and-out prohibition, but there are enough warnings to scare most travellers away.
"Lysseya?" I tasted the word and a chill scuttled up my spine on little rat-feet. That sounds familiar. Wait a minute...
You have more data? there was an incredulous emphasis on that first word. One of the things that I had learned about my pet artificial intelligence was that smart computers like to believe that they're cleverer than their makers; sweet as he was, Zenni was no exception.
Don't take it personally, partner. Maybe my educational input had a wider base than yours! the memory emerged, a vivid bubble rising from the murky depths. This won't be on your records - it falls short of hard fact. Lysseya is part of the folklore of the spaceways, a legend among the lineworkers and labourers of the cargo hulks. It was always turning up in the trash story-tapes I used to read as a teenager: Lysseya - the closed planet, the forbidden place, the world of riches. It was rumoured that there were precious metals and rough gemstones there for the taking, if you ran the gamut of hostile natives, who were always portrayed as tall, night-black warriors, all of them telepaths.
I can never understand why humans let their children read such junk! Zenni sketched a sneer of distaste in my head. A telepathic race! If we'd run across such a thing we'd all know about it - Terra couldn't keep something that big under wraps. If the Lysseyans had that kind of potential the loss of one survey team wouldn't have scared Earth off - and they certainly wouldn't have waited ten years to take another look at the place.
They weren't natural telepaths, I frowned, delving deeper into things that had been buried for an age. They used a drug to induce psi power, extracted from a native plant. They called it quial.
Fool's tales, Zenni decided. Lack of firm data invites fertile imaginations to people a planet with supermen and clothe it with riches. Lineworkers have time enough on their hands to fill with daydreams.
Perhaps, deep in the pit of my stomach the snake-thing of precognition was muttering in its sleep. It wasn't an activity I encouraged; my nightmares were built on projections of what would happen if it ever fully awoke. I listened to the feather-light brush of suggestion, the whim that coalesced into shape. Why don't we go take a look?
At Lysseya? I can promise you that you won't find your legend. Keep your dreams and let's go somewhere else.
You're running scared, I accused. A few words of warning and you want to keep me away from the place. It can't be that dangerous.
Earth lost ten men and a scoutship there. I call that dangerous, based on the definition of the word in my dictionary bank.
They weren't paired to a psionic complement computer, I reminded. What do we have to fear from telepaths, ever if they are fierce? Anyhow, we can study the world first. I don't aim to go down blind and ignorant.
Zenni said nothing.
It's been half a year since I spent any appreciable time on a planet. I know I've had a handful of half-day shopping stops but that isn't enough, I pleaded. With the best will in the world, Firebird isn't an ideal stimulating environment. I need some open spaces, a change of scenery and the sight of some people.
Are you lonely?
With you around - certainly not! I grinned. But I am bored.
And curious?
As an armful of cats! I want to go to Lysseya.
Zenni sighed. Okay, Anna - you win. We go.

© Gillian M Paddock 2001

On to Chapter Three or back to the Kitchen .