Strata Read online

  When the ship boosted the bath water slopped gently against the edge of the tub, but did not spill. Kin, who had been brought up to be polite to machines, said: ‘Neat.’

  ‘Thank you. Five hours and three minutes to flickover.’

  Kin soaped an arm thoughtfully. After a few minutes she said: ‘Ship?’ ‘Yes, lady?’

  ‘Where the hell are we going? I don’t recall giving you any instructions.’

  ‘To Kung, lady, as per your esteemed order of 338 hours ago.’

  Kin rose like a well-soaped Venus Anadyomene and ran through the ship until she dropped into the pilot chair.

  ‘That order,’ she said softly, ‘repeat it.’ She watched the screen intently, one hand poised over the panel that would open a line back to Kingdom Up. Joel wouldn’t have frozen himself yet, the process took hours. Anyway, a machine could just unfreeze him. The important thing was that the station had a big enough transmitter to punch a message through to the Company. She recognized the touch of Jago.

  The transmitted order had been simple enough, prefaced by the ship’s call sign and Kin’s own code. It had come over the normal ground-to-orbit channels. It could have come from a dozen transmitters while work on Kingdom was being completed.

  It had ended: ‘A flat world. You, Kin Arad, are a very curious person. Cheat me and you will forever wonder what sights you missed.’

  Kin’s hand dropped – and didn’t touch the message switch.

  You couldn’t build a flat world.

  But then, you couldn’t come back if you were a Terminus pilot.

  And you couldn’t duplicate Company scrip.

  ‘Ship?’

  ‘Lady?’

  ‘Continue to Kung. Oh, and open a channel to the screen in my study.’

  ‘Done, lady.’

  It was wrong. It was probably foolish. It would certainly get her fired.

  Be there or forever wonder.

  She filled the hours by relearning Primary Ekung and reading the supplements to the planetary digest. It appeared the kung now had a Line, but no one had got around to banning ship landings on the world itself. Nothing much was banned on Kung, even murder. She checked and found it was now the only world in local space that actually allowed ships to land under power. Was that relevant?

  Kung was hungry for alien currency. There wasn’t a great deal Kung could produce that humans could use, except a whole variety of pneumonia-type illnesses, but there was a lot Kung wanted. It was trying to start a tourist industry …

  Kin had been there. She recalled rain. The kung had forty-two different words for rain, but that just wasn’t enough words to encompass the great symphony of water that fell for fifty-five minutes in every hour. There were no mountains. The light gravity had allowed plenty to rise, but it allowed lots of ocean spray into the wind to wash them down. The nubs that remained had a dispirited, back-turned look.

  Of course, sometimes they became islands. Kin remembered about the tides.

  An over-large moon and a cool, close sun meant nightmare tides. Vegetation was either fungal, able to spring up and fruit hurriedly at low tides, or it was resigned to a semi-submerged life.

  And tourists came. Even though they had to wear float-jackets most of the time in case of flash tides, the tourists came. They were fishermen and mist enthusiasts, microphiles and wanderjahr biology students. As for the kung themselves …

  She switched off and sat back.

  ‘You should have told the Company,’ she said silently. ‘There’s still time.’

  She answered: ‘You know what will happen. He might be mad, but he’s no fool. He’ll be prepared for any trap. Besides, Kung isn’t a human world. Company writ runs thin down there. He’ll duck and weave and we’ll lose him.’

  She said: ‘You have a duty. You can’t let a menace like him run around loose just to satisfy your curiosity.’

  She answered: ‘Why not?’

  * * *

  How rich is Kin Arad, daughter of the genuine Earth and author of Continuous Creation (q.v.)? The Company paid its servants in Days, but since they could earn far more than a Day in a day, they often sold surplus time for more traditional currencies. Temporally, then, her account showed that she had another three hundred and sixty-eight years, five weeks and two days in hand, plus one hundred and eighty thousand credits – and a credit is worth a credit these days.

  In any case, credits were backed by Days. The galaxy had rare elements in plenty. The transmuter at the heart of every strata machine or dumbwaiter could make anything. What else but longevity itself could back a currency? Kin could buy life. Could Solomon have done it? Could Cloritty have done it? Could Hughes have done it?

  She was rich.

  An alarm bleeped. Kingdom’s sun bulked in the forward screen as a fire-rim black disc, the sensors having long ago been appalled by its brightness.

  Kin switched off the ship’s voice, because she hated the count-down to an Elsewhere jump. It was like waiting for death. If the computer was right, and it was never wrong, the ship would jump just as soon as it was at an acceptable orbital speed with regard to— (a few seconds of vertigo, a brief agony of despair. Soullag, it was called on little evidence. Certainly something in the human mind refused to travel faster than – it had been experimentally verified – 0.7 light years per second, so that after even a short jump through Elsewhere-space there was a hollow black time before the rushing mental upwellllll—)

  —the destination world. Kin caught her balance, and looked out. The Kung sun was a cool red dwarf. Statistics said it was small. They lied. From four million miles away it was a giant. Kung practically rolled through its upper atmosphere – and there it was, a perceptible black disc. Kin smiled. Kung, living under permanent cloud cover, were mad enough to begin with. What sort of religion would they have developed if they had been able to see the sky?

  Three hours later she left the ship a few miles from Kung Line Top.

  The satellite was decorated in Kung style – grey and brown-purple predominated, with startling touches of heart-attack red. There was no immigration control. Kung welcomed smugglers. Smugglers were rich.

  Her suit’s jets wafted her gently into one of the airlocks, which cycled automatically.

  Line Top! The spaceward end of the mono-molecular wire that linked every civilized world with the greater galaxy! The gateway to the stars, where robots jostled with ten-eyed aliens, spies moved circumspectly, golden-bearded traders of strange and subtle wares sold curious powders that made men go mad and talk to God, and cripple boys busked strange electronic instruments that plucked emotions. Line Top! A hefty kick and you had escape velocity. Line Top! Threshold of the universe!

  Anyway, that was the idea. But this was reality, and Kung was in a poor time for the tourist trade. The kung that loped through the tethered satellite’s corridors were admittedly colourful, but familiar. There was an unipodal Ehft operating a sweeping machine in one corridor. If it was a spy for the Galactic Federation, it was a master of disguise.

  The big board on the main concourse said there was an hour to wait until the next downward shuttle. Kin found a bar with a window overlooking the shuttle hall. The bar was called The Broken Drum.

  ‘Why?’ she asked the kung behind the bar. Saucer-eyed he fixed her with the bland stare of barmen everywhere.

  ‘You can’t beat it,’ he said. ‘Your wish?’

  ‘I thought kung had no sense of humour.’

  ‘That is so.’ The bar-kung looked at her carefully. ‘From Earth?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kin.

  ‘Which one? I’ve got a brother-uncle on Real Ea—’

  ‘The genuine one,’ said Kin sharply. He looked at her thoughtfully again, then reached under the counter and pulled out a filmy cassette that Kin recognized with a sinking heart.

  ‘I thought the face was familiar,’ said the barkung triumphantly. ‘Soon as you walked in, I thought, very familiar face – of course it’s a bad holo on the filmy, but
still … Ha. Do you think you could do a voice print on it, Miss Arad?’ He grinned horribly.

  She smiled valiantly, and took the tape translation of Continuous Creation from his damp four-fingered hands.

  ‘Of course, it’s not for you, I understand, it’s for your nephew Sam,’ she murmured cruelly. The kung looked startled.

  ‘I have no nephew Sam,’ he said, ‘although I had intended it for my son-brother Brtkltc. How did you know?’

  ‘Magic,’ sighed Kin.

  She took her drink to the big window, and idly watched tugs shunting cargo shuttles across the marshalling wires while behind her she half-heard the bar-kung talking excitedly to someone on the intercom. Then a someone was standing by her chair. She looked round, and then up. A kung was standing beside her.

  Look at the kung. Seven feet tall, and then topped off with a red coxcomb that was made of something like hair. Two saucer eyes filled the face, and they were now two-thirds closed against the lights that had been turned up by the bar-kung out of deference to Kin. The body was skeletal, with body-builder’s muscles strung like beads on a wire and a bulge between the shoulder blades for the third lung. The shipsuit it wore was a masterpiece of tailoring. It had to be. The kung had four arms.

  It grinned. A kung grin was a red crescent with harp strings of mucus.

  ‘My name is Marco Farfarer,’ he said, ‘and if it will help you to cease staring, I am a naturalized human being. You only think you’re seeing a kung. Don’t let a mere unfortunate accident of birth confuse you.’

  ‘My apologies,’ said Kin. ‘It was the second pair of arms.’

  ‘Quite so.’ He bent lower, and said in the voice laden with the breath of swamps: ‘A flat world?’

  Then he sat down, while they sought for clues in each other’s face.

  ‘How did you know?’ said Kin.

  ‘Magic,’ he said. ‘I recognized you, of course. I enjoyed your book. I know Kin Arad works for the Company. I see her sitting in Kung Line Top, a place one would not expect to find her. She looks ill at ease. I recall that about a month ago, when I was on Ehftnia and couldn’t get a ship out – being only the third best long-haul pilot in the region – I was approached by a man who—’

  ‘I think I know the man,’ said Kin.

  ‘He said certain things and made certain offers. What did he offer you?’

  Kin shrugged. ‘Among other things, a cloak of invisibility.’

  The kung’s eyes widened. ‘He offered me a small animal skin pouch which produced these,’ he murmured. Kin picked up the notes he laid on the table. There was a wad of 100 and 1000 Day bills, an Ehftnic ceramic 144-pjum bar, a thin roll of assorted human currencies, several hundred Star Chamber tokens and a computer card.

  ‘Some of the currency I tendered to a moneychanger on Ehftnia,’ said Marco, ‘and she accepted it. There can be no greater proof of its genuineness, if you have ever done business with an Ehftnic. I think the card is a keycard to an autobank, probably on Ehftnia.

  ‘There was a lot more, mostly Ehftnic dollar bars. I was poor at the time.’

  Kin flicked a pjum bar and watched it roll across the table.

  ‘The bag produced them?’ she asked slowly.

  ‘Aye. ’Twas no more than hand sized. I watched it all come out. I thought he was Company. He wished to buy my services.’

  ‘As a pilot?’

  The kung waved two hands vaguely. ‘I can fly all kinds of ship, no error. Even without matrix tapes. I’m the best – what do these want?’

  The bar-kung approached the table diffidently towing behind him a very large hairy bell, which kept up by hopping on its one foot. There was a voicebox strapped to the tuft at its tip.

  ‘This is Green-shading-to-indigo. It’s an Ehft,’ he said, helpfully. ‘It’s the Line Top Sanitary Officer.’

  ‘Pleased to make its acquaintance,’ said Kin. With a deft flick the Ehft produced a transparent box from under its – cloak, skin? – and flourished it a few inches in front of Kin’s eyes. She heard Marco hiss.

  ‘Voilà! Regardez!’ screeched the voicebox. ‘Earthian! Moutmout! Sapient! Question!’

  A large black bird in the box looked beadily at Kin, and went back to preening its feathers.

  ‘It turned up yesterday,’ said the bar-kung. ‘I told him, it’s a bird, an Earth animal. Only it talks.

  ‘We looked it up in the Guide to Sapient Species, but there is only one avian, and this is not it.’

  ‘It looks like a damn big raven,’ said Kin, taking the box. ‘What’s the problem?’ She paused. ‘I see the problem. You want to know, do you arrest it or destroy it? Anyway, how did a bird get in here?’

  ‘Puzzle!’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  On an impulse Kin opened the box. The bird hopped up onto the rim and looked at her.

  ‘It’s harmless,’ she said. ‘Probably someone’s pet.’

  ‘Pet?’

  ‘Mental symbiote,’ drawled Marco. ‘Humans are crazy.’

  The Ehft shuffled forward uncertainly and shoved its tentacle towards Kin again. It held a thick loop of intricately-knotted string. With a sinking heart she recognized it as an Ehftnic touch-book.

  ‘When I told it you were you, it went all the way back to its pod for its translation of your book,’ said the bar-kung proprietorially. ‘It wants you to—’

  But Kin was already tying a personalized knot at the beginning of the coil.

  ‘Understand! Not! Self!’ squawked the voice-box. ‘For! Pup! Belong! Sibling!’

  ‘He means—’

  ‘I understand,’ said Kin wearily.

  ‘Jalo,’ screamed the raven.

  ‘You take it away,’ said the bar-kung, thrusting the ‘cage’ into a pair of Marco’s arms. ‘She can feed it or eat it or make love to it or teach it to sing or whatever humans do with pests.’

  ‘Pets,’ said Marco. He took the cage. There didn’t seem to be any alternative.

  The Ehft watched them head towards the shuttle bay.

  ‘Crazy?’ it ventured.

  ‘Humans run the universe now,’ said the bar-kung bitterly. ‘Such craziness, I wish I could get hold of some. Notice the way humans walk as if they own the galaxy?’

  The Ehft considered this. It had always found it an effort to comprehend a method of locomotion that didn’t involve tentacles.

  ‘No,’ it said.

  There were few passengers on the shuttle. There was a moment of high-gee as strap-on rockets sent it swinging out of the hangar and down the Line.

  ‘At least I’ll have a native guide,’ said Kin, and grinned to show that it was a joke. But this kung seemed to know about humour. Legally human?

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to help me there,’ said Marco, fishing a pouch out of his travelling bag. ‘I’ve never been down there in my life. Sometimes I’ve run freighters here, but only as far as Up.’

  ‘You mean you got that close and never went to look at your people’s world?’

  ‘Whose people’s world? I was born on Earth.’

  He brought out a bone-coloured pipe, filled it from a pouch and lit it with an everglow. Kin wrinkled her nose.

  ‘What’n hell’s that?’

  ‘Tobacco,’ said Marco. ‘Cutty Peerless VI. There’s a man in London sends it out to me. That’s London England, you understand.’

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’ There was a click as the cabin air filters came on. Marco took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at it reflectively.

  ‘On the whole, no,’ he said, ‘but it is historically satisfying. May I ask you a question?’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘Do you have a thing about kung? Sexually, I mean?’

  Kin stared into the great grey eyes and at the mottled skin, and the snappy answer died in her throat. She recalled occasional rumours. Marco radiated maleness from his matchstick figure. Kung males were almost unbelievably masculine. And priapic, apparently. Kung were directly polarized, male and fema
le, with none of that subtle elision between the absolute male and absolute female psyches that humans possessed. To some human women the kung machismo was magnetic.

  ‘Never in a thousand years,’ she said levelly. ‘You can call me old fashioned if you like.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said the kung. ‘I hope I did not cause offence?’

  ‘Nothing that won’t heal. What, er, made you ask?’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t credit the stories I could tell you, Kin Arad. Of young human females with Freffr-comb hairstyles and what they think is genuine kung style dress and a superficial and uninformed taste in Tleng music. When I played piano in a nightclub on Crespo during the spacer slump I had to lock my windows at night, and once two young—’ He paused, then went on. ‘Of course, I realize you are a cosmospolitan woman. But I once had to hit the wife of a New Earth Ambassador with a chair.’

  The raven fretted in its transparent cage. Kin glanced at it.

  ‘What are we going to do if Jalo contacts us?’ she said.

  Marco took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Do? I intend to visit this flat world. What else?’

  Tide was up when the shuttle juddered into the terminal, smoke pouring from the brake pads. The kung had solved the water level problem by building the terminus buildings on a raft that rose up and down the Line as the migrating oceans shifted around the planet.

  Kin peered out into the grey rain. Around the station raft other woven buildings were bobbing at their anchor poles. A few kung were abroad this early, paddling coracles along the shifting streets like a regatta for Gollums.

  Marco splashed up, dragging a small and terrified kung behind him.

  ‘This says it’s been hired to pick us up. Not very dramatic, is it?’

  Prodded by Marco, the boatkung led them over the gaggle of boats moored around the platform to a human-built tourist speedster, its four balloon tyres now doubling as flotation bags. Kin settled into the back seat. The rain was warm, and she was already sodden. Maybe there was something particularly penetrative about kung water.

  Marco shoved the boatkung into the front passenger seat and fumbled with the controls. The mooring rope groaned and parted as the boat bucketed forward between wings of spray.