Carrearranis (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 5) Read online

  The reply from Arak, anyway – or rather the first of many responses – arrived bang on time.

  ‘Joy to you, Alex,’ Arak appeared on screen for the first time without the formal gathering of villagers behind him. It was mid-morning on the island and people could be seen in the background getting on with everyday tasks, preparing food and washing clothes. As the anthropology team whooped with delight, Alex focussed on what Arak had to say. ‘It is good to know that you are so close; welcome. I will speak to you again when we have spoken between ourselves and spoken with the Guardian.’

  Within minutes, they had five hundred and nine other responses, too, from each of the other inhabited islands. These were directed to their newly appointed liaisons. The planet had been divided into sectors, each officer taking on responsibility for a sector with a team of crew supporting them. This meant that every member of the crew had several islands they were liaising with directly. Their task was to get to know those communities, not just in terms of gathering data but in forging friendships with individuals. This was not going to be a diplomatic contact in which ambassadors spoke with one another, but a direct contact in which their objective was to speak personally with everyone on the planet. Even with Carrearranis’ tiny population that was going to take some time. But as Alex had understood from the start, this was not going to be any rush job.

  The first couple of weeks established the pattern that would become normal life aboard the Heron. Routine watchkeeping and maintenance was radically rescheduled so that there was always at least one member of each sector team available to answer calls, day or night. This often meant that people were assigned to watches or duties way beyond their normal role.

  ‘You know, this would be absolutely impossible on any other ship, dear boy,’ Buzz observed, surveying the reorganised watch and quarter bill which Shion had helped him complete.

  Alex nodded agreement. His policy of allowing crew to take as many courses as they liked had paid off now, for sure. His crew was not only the most highly trained of any frigate in the Fleet but extraordinarily cross-qualified. Every one of them was a qualified technician, for a start, which would certainly not be the case on a regular Fleet ship, and even the most junior rating was able to undertake several roles. They had the flexibility to do that, too, not one person objecting to being handed a watch schedule which had them working odd hours and pinging about the ship working for several departments, sometimes working above their rank and sometimes below it. Everyone understood that this was what was needed to keep the ship running smoothly while prioritising their mission.

  ‘There will,’ Alex observed, ‘be spluttering at the Admiralty.’

  Buzz chuckled, readily able to envisage the incoherent outrage of Old School officers when they saw this document. Attempting anything as radical as this aboard a regular Fleet ship would have cost the skipper and all the officers involved their careers, without a doubt. It was crazy, the wildest watch and quarter bill ever produced under an Admiralty seal. Even Buzz had needed Shion’s multi-cognitive abilities to figure it out.

  ‘Well,’ he said, with his usual philosophical attitude, ‘if they weren’t spluttering about this, it would be over something else.’

  They adopted the same kind of resigned attitude to the spluttering of the LIA, a continuing barrage of protests against just about everything they were doing in which the words ‘reckless’ and ‘threat to League security’ appeared with monotonous predictability. This very soon became a background noise, routinely dealt with by the sending of a standard format acknowledgement, and no more permeating their awareness than the hum of engines. The presence of civilians aboard didn’t impinge much, either. Only eight of them were being allowed aboard at a time, reducing their numbers to manageable levels, and they were pretty much contained on the interdeck, too, under the tactful management of Mako Ireson.

  ‘No, they’re no trouble, really,’ he assured Alex, when the skipper asked him privately how he was coping with them. ‘They’re in our territory now so they’re much less bombastic for a start, and there’s no anxious waiting, they can see everything that’s going on. And because we’ve involved them, given them some training and assigned them to teams, they’re fully on-side.’

  Alex gave him a cynical look, very sure that it could not be that simple, or that harmonious, and Mako laughed, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Okay,’ he conceded, ‘they can be a bit over-enthusiastic and their opinions aren’t always founded on any great depth of understanding…’ he paused for a moment as Alex cracked into an appreciative guffaw. ‘But I’ll take over-enthusiasm and half-baked ideas over fear, any day. It’s when they’re frightened that they get difficult.’

  Alex nodded and grinned at the man who’d become such an important member of the team. He could still remember Mako coming aboard; the archetypal groundhog. He’d reduced the crew to gleeful laughter within minutes, during his initial tour of the ship. ‘I know that port is to the left and starboard right when you’re facing the nose of the ship, so which way am I facing now?’

  He’d come a long way since then, a very long way, but it was undoubtedly that experience of being so helpless and lost aboard the warship which made him such a sensitive guide and carer for others in the same situation. They would struggle without him, Alex knew, and looked at him with warm appreciation.

  ‘Well, if they get too much,’ he said, ‘please tell me.’

  It was Mako’s turn to laugh. After his decisive handling of the civilians in that meeting at Oreol, none of their passengers wanted to risk being flattened by the mission commander again. Mako had also done his bit by instilling a rather over-hyped view of the absolute authority of the skipper of a warship, so their civilian guests were in cautious awe of him. Asking for Alex to intervene in any minor difficulty with them would, therefore, be like deploying a superlight missile to splat a fly.

  ‘I will call on you if I need you,’ Mako promised, secure in the knowledge that things would never get that bad.

  With no problems demanding his attention aboard ship, therefore, Alex was able to give most of his time to learning about Carrearranis.

  Disappointingly, though not surprisingly, Arak told him that the Guardian would not communicate with them directly. The fact that it never had communicated with them directly even when driving them out of the system had been a pretty good indicator that it wouldn’t, and Arak confirmed this.

  ‘The Guardian says it will not speak for us,’ he explained, seeming a little puzzled himself by this, ‘it says that is beyond its purpose. I don’t understand why it won’t, if it would be helpful to you, but my sorrow, it will not.’

  Alex understood why it wouldn’t.

  ‘The Olaret went to great lengths to ensure that the Guardian would never be perceived or worshipped as a god,’ he observed, in the briefing to discuss that refusal. ‘It has told every generation of Carrearranians, over ten thousand years, that it is a machine in their service and neither a living being nor in any authority over them.’ He saw questions on a few faces and addressed them with a slight smile, ‘I know, it has given them the Laws of Life which shape their society, the principles they live by, but it has never at any time attempted to enforce those laws, there is no threat of punishment or withdrawal of its services if they choose to take another path. Okay,’ he conceded, ‘there is an element of influence there in that they are being told these Laws of Life by a very advanced starship which protects their world, but the Olaret took great care that it would not assume the role either of god or ruler. So it is not very surprising really that it has been programmed to facilitate the Carrearranians engaging in safe contact with other people but not, itself, to become involved in that process. It may be frustrating, but we have to respect that. And don’t,’ he added, looking straight at one of their young officers who was looking very thoughtful, ‘even think about suggesting we might attempt to hack it. That would be just about the most undiplomatic thin
g we could do, short of firing missiles at it.’

  The young officer turned bright red and mumbled an apology, causing a ripple of amusement and a brief acknowledging grin from the skipper.

  ‘We must,’ Alex stated, ‘be patient, take this slowly and figure things out on the basis of secure knowledge, not guesswork. At this stage we need data – all the information we can get about everything we can think to ask about. So…’ he glanced around the table and smiled as he saw understanding and a strong, shared sense of purpose, ‘let’s get to it.’

  The big diplomatic question – whether the Guardian was exerting rights-abusing control over the population, was answered very quickly. Arak’s response to a delicately phrased question about who decided when they would have children was a mix of astonishment and hilarity.

  ‘Don’t your people control that?’ He asked, amazed. ‘Land can only support so many people without hardship or damage to the land itself, so it is obvious that, in a family, a baby will be born as an answer to the death of an elder. Life answers death, this is how it is, is it not so with you? And it is very easy, after all…’ a giggle escaped him. ‘There is sex for love and fun, and there is sex for making babies. But you must know that. You can build starships; you must know how to manage such basic things.’

  There were, evidently, going to have to be long and careful conversations about over-population and pollution on League worlds, but at least it was apparent that they did not have to deal with a scenario in which the Guardian had to be regarded as a rights-abusing tyrant.

  This turned out to be the case, too, with their political structure. There was nothing the League would recognise as a democracy, since there was no voting system and nothing private about the discussions which elevated people to the status of elder. Each village had the same array of elders – one was the healer, chosen as the most skilful in knowledge of medicines and their care for the sick. Another was the village midwife, since pregnancy was not regarded by them as an illness and the healer would only become involved if something went wrong. Other elders were the best at fishing, at gathering food, at building boats, at working stone. The chief of each island, translated literally as Elder Elder, was the person the villagers considered to be the best at resolving arguments.

  ‘There’s nothing inherently tyrannical about that,’ Buzz said, making the official determination of whether the Carrearranian form of government could be recognised as such. ‘It isn’t democracy, of course, but it is inclusive, every adult has their say, and the post-holders are very directly accountable to the village for the way in which they carry out their duties. I have no difficulty with recognising them as a legitimate form of government and acknowledging them as five hundred and ten island nations. Though we must also check that there are no inhabited islands we’re not in contact with, particularly bearing in mind that the use of base eight suggests that it is likely that there were five hundred and twelve islands provided with singing stones – eight times eight times eight.’

  He turned out to be right about that. The Olaret had indeed established a network of five hundred and twelve islands suitable for habitation, providing each of them with a singing stone which had become the focus of each settlement. Two of the islands had been lost during their history, though, one swept bare of vegetation and most of its topsoil in what the Carrearranians referred to as the Great Storm, and the other subsumed under lava. They did not, Arak assured them, maintain settlements on islands without singing stones, though they made use of them for gathering food and other resources.

  Alex accepted this as confirmation that they had full knowledge of the population of Carrearranis, though his own priority, of course, was to investigate that tantalising comment about ‘until the clean ship comes.’ This he did in the most straightforward manner possible, by simply asking Arak about it.

  ‘You said that you expect a clean ship to come one day,’ he said, ‘which suggests that a clean ship could even land on your world. We need to know exactly what you mean by a clean ship – we can make our ships very very clean, but we need to know what the Guardian means by ‘clean’ so that we can try to make a ship meet that standard.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the ship that matters, skipper,’ Rangi Tekawa observed, regretfully. ‘It’s us, you know? And given the level of technology we’re dealing with, I doubt that any amount of decontam will do the trick – however sterilised we may be all of us still carry markers from previous infections.’

  Alex was about to say that even permission to send a sterile probe would be major progress, when Silvie joined the conversation.

  ‘I’ve never been infected,’ she said, feeling the waves of disappointment through the ship and attempting to be helpful. ‘I could…’

  She broke off and burst out laughing as everyone on the command deck stared at her and a blast of horror came at her from all directions.

  ‘Oi!’ She poked Alex on the arm, as he had come close to shuddering even at the thought of sending the quarian in to represent them. ‘I am an ambassador!’ she pointed out.

  Alex grinned at her with warm affection in his eyes.

  ‘They’re not ready for you,’ he said, with the unstated addition, we’re barely able to cope with you ourselves which Silvie understood as well as if he’d spoken it aloud.

  ‘Pig,’ she said, but she chuckled, amused by the flood of relief around her.

  Eleven hours later, the answer came back, as usual in a couple of stages.

  ‘Clean is clean,’ Arak was laughing in his first response, evidently finding Alex’s question nonsensical. ‘Clean is a definite, something is either clean or it isn’t. Your ships are not clean because the Guardian wouldn’t let them approach. But I will ask. Joy to you!’

  Half an hour later the second signal arrived, evidently after Arak had had a conversation with the Guardian. He was still very cheerful, delivering the blow that would devastate their hopes as casually as he might talk about the weather.

  ‘The Guardian says that the clean ship must come from a world which has never known infection and that nobody aboard it can have been on a world that is infected or in contact with someone who has been on a world that is infected.’

  That ruled out every human world and every member of the human race. Alex took it stoically, with no more than a quiet sigh, but there was a groan of dismay through the ship as people understood what had been said. There was no world in human space which had never known infection. That, after all, was the point of the Firewall, enclosing and quarantining that part of the galaxy through which plague had spread. The many genomes which defined themselves as ‘humanity’ were the descendants of survival species engineered by people facing their own extinction. They took it for granted that they would be exposed to many pathogens and get ill at times, infections which their immune systems fought off, sometimes with the assistance of drugs. But there wasn’t one human being alive who had never had so much as a mild throat infection – a mild throat infection which was in fact a variant of the viral plague known as the Red Death. What Arak was telling them, therefore, was that no human ship would ever be allowed to approach Carrearranis and no human could hope to set foot there.

  ‘I guess that means we’ll be here a long time?’ Silvie queried.

  Alex nodded. There was no possibility now that they might be able to put together a landing party with a sterilised ship and fully decontaminated team. Their objectives would have to be scaled back. But that did not mean that they were about to give up. The words ‘give up’ were not on Alex’s list of options.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked, worried that she might prefer to be seeing other worlds.

  ‘No, not at all,’ she assured him. ‘I might pop back to Telathor if I get bored, but I’m very happy and comfortable here. And I’m learning a lot,’ she added, rather unexpectedly because she didn’t seem to be taking any great interest in their mission. ‘Watching how you go about this diplomacy thing with a new world is helping me to understand
what your first contact team were trying to do when they made contact with us,’ she explained, as Alex looked a little surprised. ‘Which made no sense to us at all at the time, but I’m starting to see now what they were attempting, and that’s helpful in understanding how things have ended up in the mess they are now. Which it is,’ she reminded him, ‘my job to try to sort out.’

  Alex had almost forgotten that. Or, more accurately, had started to think that Silvie had forgotten it. She had, of course, been sent to learn about humans in an effort to resolve the diplomatic crisis between her people and humanity, but she never talked about that and didn’t seem to view it with any degree of importance. It seemed very much a personal journey for her, in which the question of whether she was enjoying herself or not loomed much larger than any diplomatic issues.

  ‘Come on!’ Silvie laughed again, seeing his momentary surprise. ‘I was born to do this! Engineered specifically to be ambassador to humanity, to figure out what’s going on with you people and try to find a way to make things good between us. Which they’re not, as things stand. The people you send to Quarus are either incomprehensible or offensive or both, and we’re pretty near giving up even trying to understand and work with you. So me, I’m all about one,’ she ticked off on her fingers, ‘making sense of the bizarre way you behave and two, figuring out if a beneficial relationship is possible and if so, how to achieve it. I am watching and listening and learning all the time, every day. And you teach me the most, I think, when you’re not even trying to, when you’re so busy and focussed that you’ve almost forgotten I’m here. So just…’ she waved airily, ‘carry right on as if I’m not here, okay? And don’t worry; I’ll soon let you know if I’m not enjoying myself.’