Beyond Heaven's River (3 page)

Beyond Heavens River

Three

Kawashita looked over the lander’s interior without much surprise. It was more precisely fashioned, with fewer jutting pipes and beams, but essentially it was little different from the inner spaces of theHiryu . He wasn’t very clear on what the ship did, but it was obviously a ship.

As for the woman who escorted him, she behaved like a man, and that in itself told him things were different here. The varieties of people in the entourage, now waiting in the ship’s small cargo area, meant little to him, so he ignored them — all except one who was covered with fur. He felt a tingle go up his back as if he’d seen a demon.

“My name is Anna Sigrid Nestor,” the woman told him. “You’re in a landing vehicle which will take us up to a larger ship in a few days. If you don’t want to be here, if you don’t want to go with us, tell me now and we’ll put you back on the field or in your dome.”

Kawashita thought that over for a few seconds. “No,” he said. “I’ve been there too long.”

“I’ll say,” Nestor sighed. “Four hundred years.”

“Many lifetimes. I was many things there, learned many things.”

“Well also need your permission to record everything we do with you. We don’t want to be accused of kidnapping or anything illegal.”

“How … record?”

She held up the tapas pad. “Everything we do and say is kept in the pad’s memory, and temporarily in the lander’s computer, too. I imagine all this is unfamiliar to you.”

“I was let to read,” Kawashita said.

“Do we have your permission?”

“To record, yes,” he said.

“Would you like to rest, change clothes?”

He held up his arms and let them drop. Metal and heavy cloth shuffled together. “Show me clothes.”

She motioned for the entourage to stay back and took him to a private cabin. “You can take your pick of any of these outfits. Some are designed to snug-fit once they’re worn, but they aren’t the best-looking in the lot.” He looked through the small closet and felt for supports above the clothing. They were floating free. He didn’t remark on it. Instead, he sadly and deliberately picked out a gray and green robe with baggy pants and a belt. It was something he could get used to. Many of the others were rather disturbing.

“Well.” Nestor sighed again. “Congratulations. You’ve picked one that’ll snug fit. I imagine you’re modest, so you can dress in here” — she pointed to a separate bathroom — “while I wait outside.”

“I’m not so modest,” Kawashita said. “But wait outside anyway.”

“Of course. Where did you learn English?”

“I was let to read.”

“Of course.” She smiled and backed out, the door sliding shut behind her.

It was pleasant to be alone, even in a strange place. He’d almost become used to living alone — except for Ko, of course. He put the costume down on a bunk and looked at the cabin and the bathroom. He could learn much from simple fixtures, if he only knew how to interpret them. Some might be dangerous. Some might look innocuous but be very important. While he removed his armor and clothing, he whistled tunelessly. He put his bearskin shoes together next to the bunk, then removed the gauntlets from his arms. The lacquered plates rattled against each other as he arranged them on a chair. With some difficulty he reached behind himself to undo the cords and remove his breastplate. He slipped off hishitatare , which in the rush to get suited he had stolen from the body of a low-ranking samurai. Some white powder filtered from the shoulders.

It would take some time for his hair to grow out, he decided as he looked at the bathroom mirror. He rubbed his scalp, and the mirror flashed a question mark in one corner. He ignored it. While he figured out how to use the urinal, a voice asked what he wanted. He looked at the walls but said nothing as he used the facilities. They were relatively easy to understand. One of the fixtures looked obscene — an obvious phallus and less obvious but identifiable female genitalia formed in plastic and mounted on a smooth black cylinder next to the washbasin. Above the basin, next to the mirror, was a black cube with many little doors outlined on its surfaces. He looked at himself in the mirror, and again it flashed a question mark.

“Do you desire scalp massage?” the voice asked.

“No,” he said.

“Does your hair need treatment?”

He shook his head. “Needs to grow.”

“This machine will adjust style by request.” The black cube turned red, then went back to black. He wasn’t ready to take that kind of risk. He refused as politely as he could — there might, after all, be an actual human somewhere behind the walls — and put on the pants and robe. The pants shrunk appreciably until they weren’t baggy, just comfortably loose. The robe adjusted in a similar fashion. Looking in the mirror, bare chest peeking out between the lapels of the robe, he thought he had made a good compromise.

If this was his cabin, he was much better off than he’d been in the bunkroom aboard theHiryu . He frowned and picked up his armor, adjusting it and sticking it into the closet, where something invisible held it in place. His clothing was ragged, so he left it out to be mended or thrown way.

“Ko,” he said, looking around the cabin. “Where are you?” He smiled and nodded at the opposite wall. “It is good of you to come with me. In a while, we will talk. But now they wait.” His face sagged into a frown. “So many years, and now there are others, real people. So strange. I think much has changed, and I may never know how much. What? Yes, nothing will be the same now. Thekami have left in anger and shame; they will not return. We deserve our confusion. Now hide again. I will call the woman and go with her.”

He went to the door and opened it. “I am ready,” he said.

Anna looked over his clothing and nodded appreciatively. “Not bad.” She stepped through the door and looked around the cabin. “Are you ready to meet someone who actually speaks Japanese? She doesn’t even need a tapas. I’ll introduce you.”

“Is it common tongue?” he asked.

“No, not exactly.”

“Then I speak English when possible.”

“That’ll disappoint our linguist. She knows forty old human languages, and she likes to practice. But you know best.”

“I know Chinese, Tagalog, and some Malay,” he said. “Are those common?”

“Chinese is spoken widely but probably not as you remember it. Better stick with English for the time being. Your accent isn’t too thick to penetrate, and English hasn’t changed much in grammar and syntax since it was standardized, about a century and a half after you —” She lifted her hand. “After whatever happened.”

“I will tell,” he said. “But first I need food, and a tour.”

“By all means,” she said. “If you’ll be patient, we’ll take you up to the big ship. With permission, of course.”

“Up?” he asked. He pointed his finger meekly.

“To orbit. To a warper ship — a space vessel.”

“Space,” he repeated. “This is a ship for space?”

Nestor nodded. “We have a lot to explain, I can see that.”

“This is not the Earth?” He had suspected as much, but now he wanted to be sure.

She shook her head gently. “Earth is very, very far away.”

“Then I am glad,” he said. “Have not lost as much as was thought.”

“If you’re ready, a few of my friends would like to meet you.”

“Ones with fur and bright clothes?”

“No, not right now. You can meet them later if you want. I have a first officer who’s very good at history. She tells me you were dressed as a samurai warrior, but that you’re not from that time period. You’ve made us all very curious.”

“Will speak for exchange,” Kawashita said, his lips thinning with determination. “You will tell and let me read all I have to know about this.” He gestured vaguely at the bulkheads.

“Of course. In a few days you’ll get to talk to people from the Centrum. They’ll probably assign someone to look after your welfare. If you wish, you can leave with them. But for the moment you’re welcome here.”

“First, food.”

“Come along.” Nestor opened the door and he stepped cautiously into the corridor, which circled the periphery of the lander. She stood him on a black spot beneath a hole and told him to keep his arms down. They were lifted gently to the next level. Yoshio reflexively clutched at the passing walls, sucking in his breath through his teeth. Anna touched his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said.

They stepped out of the lift field. Walking away from the periphery — Yoshio tried to orient himself, and decided they were moving toward the center of the ship — they came to a small cabin with two round tables. Four pearl-like spheres, each about forty centimeters wide, hung without apparent support just beneath the ceiling. A bright, lively painting of a strange jungle covered one wall. At least, Yoshio mused, it wasn’t a photograph — it was three-dimensional, very detailed, and seemed in constant motion.

“What would you like to eat?” Anna asked. She pointed to a square in the table nearest them. He sat down and looked into the square. Pictures of food flashed past, and hints of odor, as well as taste. He backed away, sucked in his breath — “Hht!” — then leaned forward more slowly. Some of the tastes were unfamiliar, even unpleasant.

“You can look at it again if you want, just ask for a rerun.”

“Yes,” Yoshio said. “Again, please.” The menu passed again. He settled for what looked like a plate of fish and reasonably unaltered vegetables. He then chose a drink very close to beer, and ignored a list of supplementary nourishment. “What is the third list for?” he asked.

“Some of my crew have religious regimens which require special diets to be effective,” she said. “Some are on selective starvation diets, others modified intoxicants, and that means they need periodic supplements to keep them healthy.” She pointed to the tapas, which had been silent for the past few minutes, and asked if he needed translation any longer.

He shook his head. “I would rather hear people speak and understand. Explain odd words to me, or give me dictionary.”

“Here.” She handed over the tapas. He hefted the device and looked at its pale gray screen. It fit easily into the palm of his hand. “Simply punch these three buttons in sequence and speak an unfamiliar word into the face. The screen will give a written translation in Japanese.”

While he tested the pad, his food drifted down from an opening in one of the spheres and his drink rose up from the table, glass and all. He tasted the beer and smiled slightly. “It is like San Miguel,” he said. “Philippines beer.”

“We try,” Anna said. “If that means it’s good.”

“Yes,” Yoshio said.

Anna leaned back in the chair as he ate. “Would you like to know what you’re eating? Might be a good place to start asking questions.”

Kawashita held a bite of food in mid-air and looked at it suspiciously. “This is not fish?” he asked.

“We don’t kill animals for food anymore. It’s generically known as synthecarn. It’s artificial, but I doubt you can tell the difference. Some of us object to it because it looks like dead animal flesh, but that’s a pretty fine distinction. The vegetables are cloned products grown in a few seconds in special containers. Most of what you’re eating was a liquid nutrient solution a few minutes ago, and reclaimed waste products before that.”

“The future is not appetizing,” Kawashita said. But he took a bite of the fish and decided it was acceptable. “And the beer?”

“Artificial. I’m not sure how it’s produced.”

“Do people anywhere eat things as I once did?”

“Probably. There are quite a few colony worlds where people have chosen to go back to old ways — maybe five or six thousand. But most are more rational. This is much more efficient, and just as satisfactory to anyone but a zealot.”

Kawashita took the pad and said, “Cloned.” Writing appeared and continued for several minutes, moving at an easy pace across the tapas screen. “I will not need a library with this,” he said.

“It is a library. Don’t get too dependent on it, though. We have a clinical name for people who can’t stay away from a tapas.”

“Tapas,” Kawashita said to himself. “In Sanskrit it means heat.”

“We get it from a MitelAllemain root. MitelAllemain —”

“Middle German,” Kawashita translated.

“Yes. It’s a language used on colony worlds with mixes of French-, German-, and English-speaking peoples. There’s another form called PlatAllemain, which has Spanish and Russian influences, and a third called Soyuvet, which is mostly Russian and a few other Slavic tongues. But they’re not standard. Centrum English and Demotiki — that’s mostly Greek, I think — are quite common. Most people are willing to speak English, unless you’re in political situations where native tongues are important. You seem to be a natural — knowing Sanskrit, translating quasi-French and German.”