Terra Read online

  - Stupid?

  - Yes, stupid, thank you, Compositor – as to bring into this very building a member of a species with which not only has formal contact never been established but whose very presence on this planet is interdicted by academic AND civil law?

  - She would have died, objected Lbbp weakly. He was immediately annoyed by how whiny his voice sounded as it echoed around the chamber.

  - Oh, well, that changes everything. Vstj’s voice oozed sarcasm. In that case, you should consider yourself at liberty to drag home every creature in the galaxy which you happen to find in a spot of trouble. That shouldn’t cause much disruption once we’ve converted half the country into your own private petting zoo and destroyed the ecosystem!

  - Silence, Vstj. Shm closed his big black eyes and rubbed his temples with his long fingers. Fnrrn brains are nearly twice the size of human brains so when they get a headache, they really get a headache.

  - Stand up, Postulator Lbbp. Lbbp did so and swallowed. The baby made no sound.

  The council members had been making notes all this time on small crystal slates. They now submitted individual judgements on Lbbp’s case which were compiled instantly by the Extrapolator, the Preceptorate’s main computer, producing an overall ‘verdict’ which was relayed to Shm’s own slate. He read from it in an expressionless voice.

  - It is the decision of this council that Postulator Lbbp be stripped of the position of Postulator and re-designated Disseminator.

  - Would have demoted him to Ponderer myself, muttered Vstj.

  - It is further decided that the Ymn specimen be placed into indefinite biostasis.

  Lbbp gasped. Biostasis meant the baby would be biologically ‘frozen’ – all her vital systems locked and unchanging for ever. She would never die, but she would never truly live again. He clutched her tightly to his chest.

  - No! Please! I’ll take her back! I’ll take her back to her own people! I’ll find a way of getting her back! The Ymns needn’t know about us! Lbbp looked around himself in panic. Orange-clad guards were entering the chamber and advancing towards him.

  - I’m sorry, Lbbp, said Shm and sat back down.

  Suddenly, there was a chiming sound, like that of a great glass bell. Not many in that chamber had heard the sound before. Those who had, the oldest members of the council, were struck silent for a moment, then turned to their companions and explained what was happening, and soon everyone understood, though few could believe it.

  The Extrapolator was intervening. The Extrapolator had something to say.

  1.6

  The Extrapolator was the biggest and most powerful computer on the planet Fnrr. In fact, as far as it or anything else on Fnrr was aware, it was the most powerful computer anywhere in the galaxy, and had there been a more powerful computer elsewhere in the galaxy, the Extrapolator would have known about it.

  The Extrapolator was almost as old as the Preceptorate itself; beginning life as a simple electronic data retrieval system, it had been expanded and developed, having been rebuilt and rehoused countless times (generally according to its own designs) until it was now the single biggest repository of information anywhere. It was connected to every system on the planet; all information that passed through any computer or other device on Fnrr also passed through the Extrapolator’s vast artificial brain. This information was collated, compiled and cross-referenced to give the Extrapolator the most complete picture of events, past, present – and even future. So total was its command of all known facts that it was capable of extrapolating (hence its name) all possible outcomes, predicting the future with almost total accuracy.

  Since one of the facts of which the Extrapolator was aware was that it’s generally not a good idea for simple life-forms (such as Ymns and indeed Fnrrns) to know too much about their own future, it was careful to ration this knowledge. From time to time, the leaders of Mlml society (and even, on occasion, leaders from the other nations of Fnrr) would consult the Extrapolator for advice on the wisest course of action. It was far, far more unusual for the Extrapolator to take it upon itself to intervene in Fnrrn affairs and steer events in a specific way, but that – to the consternation of the Academic Council – was exactly what was happening right now.

  - Silence, all of you. Preceptor Shm’s voice was stern and commanding. He touched his slate and the chiming noise ceased.

  There was a tense hush as Shm read his slate. The guards who had been about to seize Lbbp and the baby kept their distance, but didn’t take their eyes off them.

  From its current home in a bunker hundreds of metres below the Preceptorate, the Extrapolator relayed its recommendations to Shm’s slate. Shm studied them and then said in a voice devoid of emotion:

  - Postulator Lbbp is to remain in his present position (a gasp went around the chamber, most audibly from Vstj); the Ymn child is to be placed in his custody until further notice. It is to be raised as if it were a Fnrrn child and accorded the same rights and protections granted to all our children.

  The guards backed away. Lbbp wanted to flee but found he couldn’t move.

  - That concludes this session, said Shm. Thank you.

  The council members filed out, muttering excitedly. An exasperated – But . . . But . . . was heard coming from Vstj as his colleagues ushered him away.

  Shm strode over to Lbbp as the guards returned to their posts.

  - She’s all yours, Postulator. I’d say I hope you know what you’re doing but it’s obvious that you don’t. Still, it seems the Extrapolator knows something unknown to you or me. That’s its job, after all.

  - I suppose so, murmured Lbbp.

  Shm peered down at the baby with his huge black eyes. She gazed up at him with her little blue ones. Shm grunted.

  - You’re going to need help, that’s for certain. Don’t be too proud to ask for it.

  - Yes, Preceptor. I mean no, Preceptor. Thank you, Preceptor.

  Lbbp turned to go.

  - Lbbp . . .

  Lbbp stopped. He couldn’t remember the Preceptor addressing him just by his name before.

  - We’ve all done and said things we’ve come to regret in time, said Shm. Just be careful you don’t try to make up for a minor misjudgement by committing a major one.

  Shm turned and left. Lbbp was alone in the chamber. It had never felt so huge, empty and cold. The gleaming white walls themselves seemed to be gazing at him in disapproval.

  The baby gurgled. Lbbp looked down at her and felt much better.

  - Let’s go home, he said.

  1.7

  That evening, Lbbp was in the main room of his small but comfortable apartment, sat on a smooth bench seat, cradling the baby in his long thin arms and feeding her another bottle of gloop when his windowbell sounded. He said - yes? and the tinted window pane faded to transparency, revealing his friend and co-worker Bsht hovering outside his window, hundreds of metres above the ground.

  - It’s not too late, is it? she asked. The sky behind her had dimmed to its usual evening colours of russet orange and deep red. Three of Fnrr’s ring of six moons shone with a yellowish glow above the cones and spires of the Hrrng skyline.

  - No, no, come on in, replied Lbbp, and the crystal pane slid aside.

  Bsht glided to the window ledge; there was a shimmer as she deactivated her gravity bubble and she stepped neatly into the room.

  - How is she?

  - Sleepy, I think. I’m going to try to put her to bed once she’s finished this.

  - Bed?

  - It’s how they sleep. Lying flat on a padded surface. I tried her in a sleep-well but she made the most horrible noise until I took her out . . .

  Bsht sat beside Lbbp. On a low glass table in front of the bench seat sat a bowl of warm gssh – a soothing drink much favoured by Fnrrns to aid a restful night – and a reading slate. She picked it up and looked at the text and images displayed on the crystal surface.

  - What’s this? Rrth customs and history?

  Lbbp wobbled his head s
lightly – a gesture roughly equivalent to a human shrug. - She’s going to have questions one day. Thought I’d start reading up on her people.

  Bsht scanned through the pages of information on the slate. It told of wars, violence and ignorance. She shuddered and put it down.

  - Do you think she’ll understand? Why you did what you did?

  - I’ll do my best to explain, said Lbbp, handing the baby to Bsht. Bsht studied the tiny pink face.

  - I suppose she is quite pretty when you get used to her. Does she have a name yet?

  Lbbp picked up the slate. - I wanted to give her a Ymn name but they’re nearly all unpronounceable. Then I came across this; it’s an old name for Rrth in one of their ancient languages, and it’s relatively easy to say . . .

  Lbbp pointed to a word on the slate.

  - T’r? asked Bsht.

  - Terra, said Lbbp. I think I’ll call her Terra.

  PART TWO

  The Thing From Another World

  2.1

  Terra dreamed.

  In Terra’s dreams the sky was blue instead of its usual pink.

  Great white shapes passed across the blue sky, obscuring a fierce yellow sun.

  In Terra’s dreams she was tiny, and content to be so. She would float through rows of towering blooms and shrubs, hearing voices from high above her. Sometimes the voices were soft, tinkly and soothing, but often they were grating and harsh.

  Terra’s dreams would always end the same way: colours, flashes of light and bursts of sound in darkness and silence, voices growing louder and harsher, a whirl of colours, a thin screeching sound, a blaze of light and a cold hard surface pressing against her face—

  Terra’s sleep-well had completed its deactivation sequence and lowered her to the floor of her room. She groaned, blinked and rubbed herself. She’d been using the sleep-well since she was two orbits old but she still didn’t feel like she’d ever truly got the hang of it. In theory, the 4th Generation sleep-well, the latest word in domestic GravTech, would rouse the sleeper gently and gradually to full consciousness while releasing them from gravitational suspension, slowly returning them to wakefulness and weightfulness, leaving them refreshed and ready to face the day with renewed energy and focus. In practice, it generally crashed into Terra’s dreams at their deepest point before depositing her face down, groggy and cross, onto the tiled floor.

  Like almost everything else in Terra’s world, the sleep-well hadn’t been designed with her in mind.

  Lbbp consulted the clock; it was mauve. Time to get moving.

  He gripped the fattest tendril of the ndt plant and gave it a good squeeze. Fresh ndt juice gushed from the tendril into the bowl he held in his other hand. From behind him the protein manipulator beeped its readiness and dispensed two hot slices of configuration 6 onto a waiting hexagonal plate. Lbbp reset it for himself; he preferred configuration 11 in the morning, but 6 had been Terra’s favourite since she’d been old enough for solid food. She’d want something familiar and comforting today, thought Lbbp. Big day, daunting day. Lbbp didn’t envy her the prospect; he wished he could go in her place, but at least he could make her special breakfast.

  He snapped the bowl magnetically to the side of the plate and carried them down the corridor to Terra’s room. He stroked the door; it tinkled.

  - Are you awake?

  - I think so . . .

  The door slid away. Terra was sat in the middle of the floor, her long bronze-yellow hair covering her face. Lbbp had often contemplated shaving it all off, but it caught the light in such an appealing way, and it wasn’t as if the hair was the only thing that made Terra stand out in a crowd.

  She shook her hair back and stretched. Orange morning light streamed in through her window as it faded to complete transparency; it lit up her blue eyes and rosy skin. Lbbp knew that Terra’s appearance startled many Fnrrns, but to him, at least, she was beautiful.

  Terra stood up; her shiny blue garment smoothed itself out and began gently steaming her clean. She sniffed the air.

  - Number six! she said happily.

  - Of course, replied Lbbp, handing her the plate and bowl.

  A little while later, Lbbp and Terra sat on the floor of her room, finishing their breakfast.

  - Do you have everything ready? asked Lbbp.

  - Yes, said Terra through a mouthful of configuration 6.

  - Slate all loaded up with the session one pre-sets?

  - All loaded up. I got them from the Source last night.

  - Are you nervous?

  Terra smiled. - Not as nervous as you, I think.

  - The Lyceum isn’t just bigger than the Pre-Academy, you know . . . It’s a completely different experience. It can take a long time to adjust. It did for me . . .

  - It’ll be okay. All my friends from the Pre-Ac are starting today as well, and Bsht will be there to look out for me . . .

  Bsht, Lbbp’s dear friend since his own days as a student, taught at the Lyceum. She’d been Terra’s babysitter, protector and instructor all her life, and was the closest thing she had to a second parent. The thought of her presence was making the Lyceum a much less intimidating place. For Terra, anyway. It didn’t seem to be helping Lbbp much.

  - Now, now, Bsht takes her responsibilities as lector far too seriously to give special treatment to anyone, even you, he said, tidying away the plates and bowls. If anything you might find she’s stricter towards you by way of over-compensation. Even if she doesn’t mean to be. There was this child when I was at the Lyceum whose mother . . .

  - Lbbp . . . I’ll be fine.

  Lbbp looked embarrassed for a moment, then his lipless mouth curled in a smile. Smiles, it turns out, are almost universal. - I know. I know you will, he said. Now come along, the clock’s almost violet.

  Terra tied her long hair back into what she would have called a pony tail back on Rrth, but she’d never seen a pony, and since hers was the only hairstyle on the planet, she hadn’t ever felt the need to come up with a name for it. She packed her slate into a shiny fabric bag, slung it over one shoulder and stood at the window.

  Lbbp tapped the window pane and it slid silently open. The air was crisp and bracing, the sky a clear pink, and orange sunlight glinted off the crystal and metal towers of the city. A beautiful Fnrrn morning.

  - You remembered to charge up your bubble?

  - When have I ever forgotten to charge up my bubble? Terra tapped the oval pod on her belt.

  There’s a knack to using a gravity bubble when taking off from a window. You have to activate the bubble at the exact moment you step off the ledge; too late and you get a moment’s lurching drop followed by a nasty jolt; too soon and you can end up bobbing about on the ceiling. Terra had made both of these mistakes more than once, but now, at eight orbits old (just over eleven in Earth years) she had the procedure down to a fine art. She was about to touch the illuminated switch on the pod when Lbbp made a hurt little noise.

  - I’m sorry . . .

  She held up her hand; Lbbp touched his fingertips to hers.

  - Always here, said Lbbp.

  - Always here, smiled Terra.

  Then she stepped off the ledge while activating her bubble in one smooth movement, and floated away towards her first day as a student of the Hrrng Preceptorate Junior Lyceum.

  Lbbp watched the glittering sphere containing his pride and joy drift away into the morning. He shed no tears. He had no tear ducts.

  2.2

  Terra floated silently above the city in her bubble, joining streams of similar bubbles, which in turn gathered together to form rivers in the air, a great current of airborne bodies held aloft by the little gravity-nullifying devices on their belts. This was morning traffic in the great city of Hrrng, the shining capital of the peaceful island nation of Mlml.

  To any other pair of human eyes, Fnrrns would look identical. The smooth grey skin, the large domed hairless heads, the black oval eyes, the short bodies and long slender limbs . . . Terra had grown up among t
he Fnrrns. She saw the differences in skin tone, bone structure and demeanour; to Terra, every Fnrrn face was unique and distinctive. She recognised her friends in their own bubbles as they drifted alongside her. Here came Pktk, his brow wrinkled with worry. He’d been more scared than any of her friends at the prospect of moving up from the cosy Pre-Ac to the big bewildering Lyceum, and he didn’t seem any less so now that the morning had arrived. Terra held up a hand with splayed fingers, the customary greeting gesture. Pktk’s expression brightened a little as he returned it, a little too enthusiastically as it happens, causing his bubble to shift slightly to the right and bounce into the bubble of an older pupil, who didn’t look happy to be returning to class and was even less happy to be boinged off course by a little newcomer. He corrected his trajectory and glowered at poor Pktk, whose facial expression now plummeted straight through worry and into fear.

  Terra let out a little chuckle of sympathy at Pktk’s plight, whereupon many heads turned towards her. She was briefly the centre of attention in the traffic flow. Terra’s laugh was unlike that of her neighbours. They would laugh when something amused them, but their tight Fnrrn speech mechanisms produced only a hissing titter. Terra’s Ymn throat produced a full tinkly laugh, and while her close friends had long since grown accustomed to it, other Fnrrns found it a strange, even alarming sound.

  As the stream of bubbles drifted on, Terra heard excited whispers passing between travellers; - That’s the Ymn child; - I heard she was starting today; - Do you know what class she’ll be in? and thought little of it. She’d been hearing such murmurs all her life, and knew that they were caused by genuine, and inevitable, curiosity, rather than fear or mistrust. With one or two exceptions.