A Raven on My Shoulder

by Dave Smeds

“We lasted three months until our first murder. That’s not a bad record when you think about it.”

Neil Moran glanced at the speaker, Dimitri Vlahakos, Inspector General for the Gamma Leporis A-III colony. Neil had been acquainted with Dimitri for more than a century.

The man’s intense, olive-skinned face dwelled in more than one memory of university days, back when Athens seemed to Neil incredibly far from home. The sang-froid rang false.

Dimitri was a man of exuberant Mediterranean gestures and passionate declarations. He was not the sort to shrug and look for the silver lining.

Who was he trying to convince?

Sometimes Neil wanted to reach inside his own skull, peel away brain tissue until he found the implants the Thwaa had left there, and yank them out.

An impossible fantasy. The implants had no nexus. Traces of them inhabited every dendrite and axon in his nervous system, as much a part of his body as, say, potassium ions or oxygen or collagen. All he could do was wish.

Neil gazed out the transport window at the planet. The Neil Moran he had been on Earth was gone. He had no choice but to be the Neil Moran of Gamma Leporis A-III—or Bjornssen, as he supposed he should begin referring to it. If he tried to deny it, reactions like that of Dimitri would remind him of all that had changed.

Observing that his Pollyannaish assessment had fizzled, Dimitri swept his hand across the view of sere peaks, eroded gullies, and slopes dotted with chaparral and scree.

“Picturesque, don’t you agree? Like your Southwest, where you were born, yes?”

Neil accepted the change of subject. “I don’t remember much of that firsthand. The Plague hit when I was only eight.

But you’re right; it’s beautiful. Doesn’t quite fit the name.

Bjornssen.” From twenty-seven lightyears away, the Hershel Telescopic Array had shown a world marked by wind-whipped peninsulas and glacier-flattened islands, much like the homeland of the Danish astronomer who processed the initial interferometric scans. Here in the middle latitudes of the main continent, that geography was not in evidence. The vista offered a solidity and permanence that peat bogs could not aspire to. Neil decided he really needed to get out and about more. He had lingered too long aboard the ark.

The transport crossed above a ridge of crumbled, weathered rock, revealing an oblong valley some fifty kilometers in length. Their course straightened into a gently descending glide toward a mass of ruins.

Dimitri pointed at the vestiges of walls and bridges. “This was quite a city when the Eridanin were here. The region used to get more rain. Signs indicate it may have been a government center of some sort.”

“Hence the archaeological interest,” Neil said.

“Well, yes, but there’s another reason why we started digging here so quickly. Examine, please, the horizon.”

Neil scanned to the left and to the right, finding sudden meaning in the configuration of the ridge. “We’re in a caldera.”

“Earth has at least two bigger than this that I recall,”

Dimitri continued. “Long Valley in California and Lake Toba on Sumatra. But this is—how do you say it? A whopper?”

“I take it it’s not entirely dormant?”

“Not any more. Fresh magma is accumulating. The last eruption was pre-Eridanin—at least thirty thousand years ago—but there is a possibility the whole plug will explode within the decade.”

“Won’t volcanic activity that potent affect the weather?”

“Nothing we can’t deal with. Some cool summers. Some hazy sunsets. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t found any permanent settlements nearby. The dig can be evacuated with a few hours’ notice.”

The transport touched down and the pilot released the locks on the passenger compartment. Neil and Dimitri stepped onto a landing field of packed earth. No tarmac or concrete. Neil deliberately noted this. The charter called for Terran presence on this world to remain as tentative as possible until the Thwaa granted permission to colonize fully.

What he observed here today, the Thwaa would witness as well. It didn’t hurt to be sure humanity received credit for the small ways in which it abided by its promises.

He might have no choice about being a Thwaa tool, but at least he was free to maintain his loyalty to his own culture.

A lean, bony individual in khaki work clothes approached, offering his hand. “Ivan Vereshchagin. I am the director of the team here,” he said in English so precise as to be overly formal.

“This is Neil Moran, the, ah, the Thwaa consul.” Dimitri winced at the hesitation he inserted into the introduction.

Vereshchagin’s youth was as perfectly sustained as that of anyone under the age of two hundred fifty, but he exuded a dour studiousness that implied he was older than either of his visitors. His unkempt aspect reminded Neil of a university professor caught in the waning of middle age. His handshake remained firm, but he failed to hide the eyelid flicker of unease that others suppressed when first meeting Neil. He stared as if expecting Neil to sprout Thwaalike cilia.

“Pleased to meet you,” Neil said.

Vereshchagin nodded. Neil waited for him to say something more—“Welcome,” perhaps—but the archaeologist managed only to look constipated.

“I hope you managed to get some sleep,” Dimitri added as the lull grew awkward.

“A little,” Vereshchagin replied.

“I didn’t leave here last night until the wee hours,” Dimitri explained to Neil. “If I’d known I had to return today to bring you, I would have saved some of the on-site investigation for this morning.”

Always the caution, carefully veiled in ingratiating language. Dimitri wanted the Thwaa to know that he hadn’t deliberately kept them out of the loop. Neil believed him.

Dimitri could not have known the Thwaa wanted to send their native observer until Neil had received the directive and so informed the governor. That summons had not come until the news of the murder, leaked by one of the diggers, raced across the net just before midnight.

“I won’t require more than a few hours,” Neil assured Vereshchagin. “I just need to check on a handful of the basic aspects of the case firsthand.”

“Very well,” the director replied. “With what would you like to start?”

“I’ll want to see the body.”

Vereshchagin cleared his throat. “This way.” Rubbing his neck and turning slowly, he guided them with a weary tread.

They entered the ruins, traversing a somber camp to a tent set apart from the others. Two men stood guard, encased in the gray uniforms of the colonial police. At Dimitri’s nod, they moved aside.

Vereshchagin held up the tent flap, eyes averted. Dimitri stayed back, ostensibly to ask his men if anyone else had come by during their vigil. Neil was left to enter alone.

The remains of a copper-skinned Asian male lay supine inside a stasis coffin, hands atop his abdomen as if arrayed by an undertaker, though he looked anything but peaceful. Until the body could be brought to the forensics lab at the capital, no cosmetic adjustments had been made. No one had replaced the dead man’s torn, dirtied, blood-splattered work fatigues. No one had wiped the brains off his face. Gore encrusted the shovel they had placed beside him.

Neil calculated the degree of force required to lodge the blade of the tool so deeply into the skull with one blow. The image of violence it engendered made him grimace. He backed out of the tent and turned away, and was grateful to hear the canvas drop out of Vereshchagin’s fingers.

“You can put it in the transport now if you wish,” Neil said.

“I’ll talk to the coroner after he’s done his job, back in Landfall.”

Vereshchagin and Dimitri glanced at each other, as if considering whose duty it was to handle this unpleasant detail. A moment later Dimitri signalled to the guards.

“Where can I interview the witnesses?” Neil asked.

“I’ll show you,” Vereshchagin replied.

As Neil put distance between himself and the gruesome evidence, he cultivated his queasiness into a seed of anger.

The death had been a waste. The dig worker had been about thirty years old, not counting hibernation. He’d had ninety percent of his life expectancy left.

If the Thwaa took an interest in his emotional reaction, as usual they gave no indication. All he could really sense was that the transmitter was active, giving his overlords whatever information it was they absorbed from him. Nevertheless it was important to Neil to insert as much genuine, human feeling as he could muster. Not for the first time, he wished the Thwaa had chosen someone less reserved than he as their liaison.

Their destination proved to be outside the encampment.

They struck out toward the mud flat upon which their aircraft perched. A lake had once filled the center of the valley, its shoreline demarcating the western and southern boundaries of the Eridanin city. Neil could make out a saline remnant of that body of water some two kilometers away. In the immediate foreground was a large pre-fab shed, evidently the only true building erected since the archaeologists had arrived.

“We didn’t want to put structures over possible excavation areas,” Vereshchagin volunteered. “The lakebed was the obvious choice—the Eridanin never used boats and never built under water.”

The shed turned out to be the storage facility for the artifacts the team had decided were worthy of longterm study off-site. Vereshchagin led them past tables and shelving units arrayed with relics, some already painstakingly cleaned and tagged, others crated and sealed for shipment, but most lying in a raw state. Half the surfaces in the room remained empty, attesting to the recent establishment of the dig.

They ended their journey in a small corner room. A table equipped with an interface waited there, surrounded by four chairs. “My office,” explained the director. “Forgive the spartan conditions. I seldom use it. After fifteen decades in a hibernation tank I prefer to spend as much time as possible outdoors.”

“I understand,” Neil replied. Which wasn’t to say he shared the urge, though he had spent the same interval in coldsleep while the ark inched its way across interstellar space. He meant he perceived why an archaeologist could not resist being part of the race to discover, somewhere within the ruined city or elsewhere on the planet, just how and why the Eridanin had lost their claim to this world.

“Who would you like to question first?”

“The murderer.” Neil fed a data lozenge into the interface and called up a screen full of names, faces, and pertinent information about the case. “Barry Radner, is it?”

“Yes. Radner.” Vereshchagin’s posture slumped. Perhaps he had hoped Neil might start with other, less volatile figures.

Indeed, had Neil been a normal investigator, he would have questioned the killer last, after gathering the data that would allow him to poke holes in whatever excuses the man tried to concoct to excuse his crime. But Dimitri had already seen to that phase the day before, working his way through all five eyewitnesses, several peripheral figures, and then to Radner himself. The Thwaa had not sent Neil to comb every flea of evidence; all they wanted was to confirm the gist of the events for themselves, through him.

“Is there a problem?” Neil asked.

“No. I can have him here in two minutes. He’s right down there.” Vereshchagin pointed out the small window, which looked out over the lakebed.

“I desired to have him kept where no one had any cause to wander near,” Dimitri added. He stepped to the window, signalled, and moved aside so Neil could see.

Looking down, Neil spotted what appeared to be a septic tank in the early stages of construction. The pair of men guarding the pit—more of Dimitri’s colonial police—lowered a ladder. Up came a muscular, red-haired man broadcasting defiance. His escorts marched him up the low bluff atop which the shed perched. Not long after the party slipped out of Neil’s field of view a knock shook the office door.

As soon as the group had entered, the guards handcuffed Radner to his chair and took up stations by the door. The accused man spared the inspector general and the chief archaeologist the briefest of glances. He regarded Neil unflinchingly.

“What? More questions?”

“A few,” Neil replied.

“Shouldn’t my lawyer be here by now?”

“Ordinarily. If it helps, I can confirm that you’ll have legal counsel well before the arraignment, and I won’t ask any questions you haven’t already been asked by Inspector Vlahakos yesterday.”

“Then why bother?”

“I am the Thwaa consul,” Neil explained. “Our patrons have asked me to look into your case personally.”

A puff of astonishment jostled Radner’s head backward.

Neil half-expected a retort, but none came. Even a man such as this could be disquieted to find himself the specific target of Thwaa scrutiny. Radner turned to Dimitri, who nodded.

“I hope you understand that lack of cooperation today is simply not an option,” Dimitri told the prisoner.

Radner shrugged.

“All right, then,” Neil said. “Let’s run through the events of early yesterday morning. You and several members of your team were excavating a building. You got into an argument with a co-worker by the name of Farid Bilyang. It escalated.

You struck him in the head with a shovel. Is that correct?”

He grunted. Neil took it as a yes.

“Why did you argue?”

Radner continued to stare, but now his eyes glinted. “He fucked my wife.”

Neil checked the interface. “That would be Christine Radner, age 29, whom you married eighteen months prior to ark launch.”

“They met when the archaeological contingent was finalized,” Vereshchagin interjected.

Neil waved the director silent. “Mr. Radner?”

“Yes. That’s my wife.” He spoke without affection.

“Did you actually witness Mr. Bilyang and your spouse having intercourse?”

“She wouldn’t admit it, but I saw him with his arm around her. Eric Denard joked with me about all the murmurs coming from my tent. He said it assuming it was me in there with Christine, but I was unloading supplies off a transport that afternoon. Pretty soon everyone was talking about that.”

Radner’s anger continued to radiate, but beneath it came an undertone of betrayal and humiliation.

Neil glanced at Vereshchagin, whose downcast eyes lent credence to the description of the social dynamics.

Turning back to Radner, Neil asked, “Would you say then that you not only had cause to believe they were having relations, but you felt that the affair was being conducted indiscreetly?”

“Yes.”

“And during the argument, those circumstances became too much to endure?”

Radner’s lips quivered violently. “A man like him had no right. It wasn’t…” He swallowed. “I couldn’t let it go on.”

Neil gauged Radner’s reaction, and realized the interview need not be prolonged. He had only the final question: “Are you sorry you did it?”

“I’m sorry it had to be done.”

Neil nodded. “I see. Thank you. That will be all.” Dimitri gestured to the guards, who uncuffed Radner. The prisoner strode away chin up, eyes gazing straight ahead, apparently unfazed by the tall musclemen at his elbows.

“I am sure in another day or two, he will realize what a ghastly mistake he made, and wish he could undo it,”

Vereshchagin said into the silence.

“He may have regrets, but I fear they will not be the right ones,” Dimitri said, beating Neil to the response. He brushed off his suit lapels, as if finding contamination there.

“Tell me something,” Neil asked Vereshchagin. “Had you heard the rumors about the affair?”

The director paled. “I had suspicions.”

Neil gestured at the background data still on the interface screen. “You let an Australian be taunted with knowledge that an Indonesian was humping his wife?” Radner was too young to have been caught in the Perth massacre, but he would have grown up among the resentful survivors.

“Everyone on our team had been getting along profoundly well since we arrived on-planet. I was lulled into a sense of security. I believed the matter would sort itself out.” His expression could only be labelled wretched. “What would you have done?”

Neil leaned back, losing the sharp tone. “Never mind. I wasn’t asking for official reasons,” he lied. “I’m sure you’ll come out of this better prepared should anything like this develop in future.”

Vereshchagin did not seem consoled. Small wonder. Even if he believed that Neil—and thus the Thwaa—had taken no note of him, Dimitri’s report to the governor would call into question the Russian’s appointment to lead the archaeological project. Neil vaguely recalled the man’s credentials from the background check he had conducted for ark candidacy, in the sweet days before Neil had been elevated from the governor’s security assessor to an unlooked-for role as Thwaa consul.

Vereshchagin was quite distinguished in his specialty, but his dearth of administrative skills had now shown itself to be a handicap. He might never be granted responsibilities of such magnitude again.

Neil spent a further two hours interrogating witnesses, especially Christine Radner, who confirmed the infidelity. He learned nothing really new, nor did he feel the need to do so.

For minute details, the Thwaa could turn to Dimitri’s official investigator’s file. After all, Bilyang was the first human to die outside the realm of Sol’s gravity. If only for posterity’s sake, the inspector was compiling an exhaustive record, a process that would resume once past the interruption of Neil’s visit.

“That was ugly,” Dimitri told Neil as they walked among the ruins, stretching their legs before the flight back to the capital. “When I arrived yesterday I expected to uncover at worst a crime of passion—a spur-of-the-moment collapse of judgment. But that man has no remorse, and he’s a racist as well.”

Neil wished he could disagree. “I’m told the jail in Landfall isn’t complete. Where will you keep him until the trial?”

“I’ll have a shuttle pick him up tomorrow. We’ll shove the bastard in the brig aboard the ark. Until then, I’m leaving him in that pit in the lakebed.”

“You’ll trust Vereshchagin’s people to stay away from him?”

“They’ve behaved themselves so far. Besides, there are no Indonesians left on site, nor any Australians besides Radner.

We can’t say that about the capital.”

Neil grimaced. “No. We can’t.”

The conversation lapsed as they ambled more deeply into the ruins. Here and there they passed diggers. 22nd-Century classical music drifted their way from a player near one of the trenches, but Neil felt strikingly out of place. He was treading a street never marked by human feet until a few weeks earlier.

The word “streets” didn’t quite apply. The space between the buildings may have been used for traffic, vehicular or otherwise, but it bore no resemblance to the gridlike arrangement of most Terran metropolitan cores. In spots the gaps were barely wide enough for a single pedestrian, in other places several trucks could have passed side by side.

When Neil had seen the city plan from the air, it had resembled the pebble-and-concrete patio of his childhood home. Foundations were laid in circular, oval, or kidney configuration, with the structures—so he gathered from the surviving examples—rising from one to ten stories and coming to rounded tops. Some edifices were huge, others small, in random sequence. The doorways were all low and wide, just the opposite of what a human would require. In fact, the only thing reminiscent of Earth architecture was the abundance of windows.

“Remarkable,” Neil said, contemplating the nearest upright tower. In the fifteen thousand years since the Eridanin had abandoned their colony, the roof had fallen in and weather, wind, and wildlife had erased most surface features, but obviously the structure had been erected by a culture that meant to stay. And had, until the Thwaa said otherwise.

“This was a rich world, Neil,” Dimitri said.

“Still is. Will be.”

“Will it?” Dimitri asked. “Is that faith I’m hearing, or do you have some sort of insider knowledge?”

Neil knew what Dimitri was asking. “The Thwaa don’t let me in on their councils, my friend. I just know what I see.

They wouldn’t have given us a chance at all this if they didn’t see some positive qualities in us, not after they went to all the trouble of kicking the Eridanin out and leaving the planet fallow ever since.”

Dimitri laughed, but it was bitter. “I’ve heard that logic before. We both know the Thwaa can’t be predicted that way.

I tell you, sometimes I feel as though when it comes to guessing how the Thwaa want us to behave, every human of this colony is dancing between raindrops in a storm, trying not to get wet.”

“Some of us are passable dancers,” Neil argued, remembering a certain night back in Athens, at the wedding of Dimitri’s cousin, when his classmate demonstrated the depth of his skill luring his countrywomen onto the floor.

“Better than the Eridanin, I suppose,” Dimitri said.

“Yes. Perhaps they had too many legs to trip over.”

Suddenly, as if Neil’s comment had reminded him of something, Dimitri checked his watch. “Ah. Good. We have time. There is a special relic Vereshchagin mentioned. I would be honored if you and I were to see it together.”

Dimitri’s invitation was flavored with the tone of inclusiveness that harkened back to long-held fellowship. Neil realized how much he had missed hearing that quality in his friend’s voice. “Okay. I’m in no hurry. Lead on.”

The inspector excused himself to consult with the nearest digger. When he returned, he led Neil a few blocks to the west. The ruins ended abruptly at the former shoreline. They continued along what had once been a boardwalk of sorts.

Neil rejected the terms “wharf” or “docks” or “quay,” tempted as he was to apply those labels. The Eridanin might have sailed vast oceans of space, but as Vereshchagin had so recently mentioned, they didn’t travel on the waters of their worlds if they could avoid it. That characteristic helped confirm which planets they inhabited. The images of their worlds in the Hershel scans showed urban areas clustered along rivers and lakeshores—the Eridanin needed water to drink as much as humans did—but none of any great extent along sea coasts, breaking the pattern shown by so many other sentient races. In that regard Bjornssen, with its abundant oceans and coastlines, must have served them poorly.

Neil was surprised, then, when—after obtaining flashlights from the shed—they headed out across the lakebed toward what had in Eridanin times been an island. Their destination was a crag near the extant pool of brine. The stratified marks of erosion proved the upper portion had been above the waterline even when the lake was at its greatest extent.

Above the highest scars left by the ancient waves, but below the point where the incline became too sharp for climbing, a dimple of shadow indicated the opening of a cave or tunnel.

Out in the flat they were buffeted by a dry but temperate wind. Neil found it necessary to step around several prairie wrigglers, native herbivores that resembled fist-sized balls of earthworms. Somewhere in each bundle of serpentine digits hid a mouth; he knew this because the creatures tumbled and rolled between the clumps of desert vegetation, gnawing at the fleshy parts like rodents and spitting out spines and burrs.

For their sake he hoped they would not be too voracious. If they ate the plants entirely they would have little shelter from predators.

He had probably seen images of this salt flat, taken by the Hershel. In twenty-seven years, some Earthbound astronomer might download the latest update and see the shed where he had interrogated Radner. He and Dimitri wouldn’t show up. Too small, and in any case their presence would be invisible. The Hershel gathered its information by taking snapshots once every planetary rotation and combining multiple exposures; anything mobile would not be recorded.

And yet, out in the open, he felt exposed. The sky was aqua, not cerulean. Alien. It provided no buffer between him and the Thwaa escort vessel he knew to be up there in orbit.

Perhaps over that very spot, at that very minute.

Something was watching them. A creature was hopping about the rocky summit ahead. Neil studied its elongated black shape, yellow beak, and membranous, batlike wings.

When it settled down and folded those wings, it strongly resembled a crow, rather than one of Bjornssen’s native avians.

Why wasn’t it hunting on this fine, clear day? Already had its fill of prairie wrigglers?

It opened its mouth and screeched, dashing further comparisons to its Earth counterpart. A real crow’s voice would have been dulcet compared to that nails-on-chalkboard cacophony.

“What the hell is that ?” Neil asked.

“That, my friend, is the most intelligent lifeform indigenous to the planet. It’s called a hugin. You’ve met Gudrun Olafsdottir? She named the species after one of Odin’s ravens.” Dimitri coughed. “Now I would have preferred a name from Greek mythology, but I’m not the head of the xenobiology task force.”

“Many of them around?”

“Fairly rare, actually.”

“He gives me the creeps,” Neil said.

“Yes. They like to observe. Natural curiosity. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could tell us what they’ve seen? They watched the Eridanin come and go. I’ve half a mind to bring one in for questioning.”

They arrived at the knees of the little mountain. A hundred meters of hard clambering brought them to the cave mouth.

It appeared to be a natural opening, but Neil knew better. Its walls seemed to be made of the same rock as the rest of the formation, but the floor was unusually level, the passageways smooth.

His suspicions were confirmed when Dimitri urged him past the first bend. Their flashlights revealed a whorllike chamber with a ceiling barely as high as their heads—tall enough that the Eridanin would have considered the space roomy. Along the walls images rested in an array much like an art gallery.

Neil had once toured caves in France and witnessed firsthand the scenes left there by Paleolithic hunters. This presentation stirred those memories, but the detail here was too fine to have been applied by the strokes of brushes or by the spitting of pigment down hollow reeds. The spectrum of colors was wider than could be assembled from mixtures of charcoal, plant dyes, and saliva. They weren’t paintings at all.

His fingertips could not tell a difference between the texture of the image areas and the rest of the walls. The pictures were part of the walls, made up of minerals, ores, and tiny gemstones that had evidently been manipulated into place at a microscopic level.

“We’ve found five of these shrines so far,” Dimitri said. “All the sites contain identical artwork, though the chambers themselves vary in size and shape. They date from early in the Eridanin occupation.”

Neil counted. “Ten scenes.”

“Yes.” The sacred number of the Eridanin, if Terran theories were correct. “This must have been quite a holy place to them.”

Neil gave all ten a thorough look. Every view contained dozens or hundreds of Eridanin. They truly were crablike, an impression only lightly conveyed in the paltry data the Thwaa had supplied. They had ten limbs. Their central bodies were low and squat. Their locomotion appeared to consist of scuttling, though only the rear three pairs of limbs were jointed in the manner of arthropods. Their extraterrestrial nature was emphasized chiefly by their centaurlike upper bodies, their huge eyes, and their long, coiled tongues.

The first scene was the most distinctive. It was an overview of a river valley. In the background two species of grazing animals—one vaguely mammalian, the other evoking comparison to duckbill dinosaurs—nibbled at meadow grass.

Clouds wandered across a sky untouched by industrial haze.

In the foreground, a spaceship rested in the meadow loam.

Gangplank down, a party of Eridanin were emerging into the sunlight. The tongues of the aliens were extruded and swaying in the breeze. Most individuals had their four arms upraised. Neil could almost hear the cheers and see the grins.

The other nine views portrayed a freshly settled planet.

Parks, bridges, bright new cities—including a mountain-ringed metropolis beside a lake that could have belonged to the ruins outside. The gallery was not unlike the sort of tribute humans would erect to their own civilization, save for the sheer density of urban life. Eridanin seemed to crawl right over each other to get to where they were going. In one scene, an immense brood of young slept three and four deep inside a vast hall, apparently in comfort, while adults played with the handful still awake.

“Quite a memorial,” Neil said.

“The other one I’ve personally seen was more eroded, but none of the sites suffered vandalism, not even at the end of the occupation. Ten thousand years they maintained the shrines. Doesn’t sound like a culture that failed to appreciate what they had, does it?”

Neil shook his head. “If I were the judge, I would say they cherished their tenancy.”

“Indeed. I presume the Thwaa knew that.”

“It’s likely. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Dimitri muttered, clearly unhappy with the opaque answer.

He checked his watch again. “We’d better go. By the time you get back to Landfall, the governor should be ready for your meeting.”

Ah, yes. The governor, Neil thought sadly. Another person who won’t like having to see me.

“Are you feeling well?” inquired Dimitri as the transport started its approach toward the capital. The high desert around the caldera was long behind them, having given way to a landscape of rolling hills, woodlands, streams, and brushy rubble-fields where Eridanin towns had not quite fully decayed. Dusk was falling, hastened by their eastward flight.

Neil rubbed his temples, trying to massage out the headache that had sprouted halfway through the flight. He had rarely suffered headaches before the Thwaa had altered him. “Not really,” he admitted, “but it’s nothing you should be concerned about.”

Dimitri scratched the five o’clock shadow on his chin, saying nothing. In the old days, either in Athens or while they were both aides to Governor Brendt, prior to ark launch, Dimitri would have never have let Neil off so easily. He loved to diagnose, be the remedy a doctor’s visit, a night of drinking, or one of his wife’s home-cooked meals.

What I have, can’t be cured by talking, Neil thought.

He peered out the window at the oncoming twilight. A lavender veil was climbing up from the eastern horizon.

Below, the only lights were those of Landfall—a few fireflies in a shadowed wilderness. “We’re bypassing the capital.”

“Yes. I’m to drop you off at the residence. The pilot and I will take the body on to the morgue. I’ll have my own meeting with Brendt in the morning.”

“Oh, yes, the new house. He’s moved in, then?”

“Three days ago,” Dimitri said. “I believe you’ll be the first guest other than family.”

A few minutes later, Neil was left at a clearing in the woods—if the term “woods” could be applied to Bjornssen’s barkless, oddly colored analogs of trees—several kilometers from the capital.

Neil paused on the landing pad, gathering himself. In years past, the governor had been his boss, perhaps even his mentor. Now Neil was the one person on Bjornssen who reported to a higher level of authority. The role change placed him in apparel that hung as if cut four sizes too large.

A lone individual emerged from the shadows. Not the expected household servant.

“Neil. Welcome to my home,” Governor Brendt called, louder than necessary.

“Hello, sir,” Neil said.

“Let me show you my new sanctuary,” Brendt offered, only the weakness of his smile betraying his discomfiture. In other respects, he fulfilled the role of proud new homeowner completely. As they set off up a trail he paused to display a favorite feature: Repellers hidden in the foliage generated fields that warded off various species of small insectoids, common pests in this humid region of the continent.

The footpath was the only route to the site. The villa was constructed along the same lines as the nearby city, which is to say it blended into the native terrain as much as possible, with a minimum of pavement. The buildings were low and sprawling, hugging the contour of a small hill, roofs tucked below the level of the forest canopy so as not to mar the line of the horizon, the patio and courtyard shaded by century-old vegetation. Turn off the molecular stabilizers and the structures would return to the soil within a few generations.

They stopped on the patio deck. Inside two women sat on a matching pair of sofas, chatting, awash in the warm glow of the living room, apparently unaware of the two men standing outside in the twilight. Neil recognized the governor’s wife, Nadya, a sable-haired, long-necked beauty, and Brendt’s sister, Olivia, not so lovely but a better conversationalist. The scene was charmingly domestic. Inviting.

Brendt had seldom favored Neil so thoroughly when he was a mere employee. As Thwaa consul, he seldom did less.

Brendt opened the patio door and ushered Neil within.

Nadya sprang up and greeted him with a hug and a kiss.

“Neil! How good to see you!”

“An excellent estate you’ve designed,” Neil told her.

“Thank you.” She glowed. “Sit down. Have some wine. You remember Olivia?”

“Of course.”

The evening was as soothing as the governor’s intimate gatherings often were. First, Neil was given a tour of the rooms. Next, the four shared a first-rate meal served by the governor’s inobtrusive domestic staff. Finally, they relaxed for hours sampling vintages from Brendt’s cellar. Neil’s new favorite proved to be a Napa Valley late harvest Riesling. He was sorry to hear they were consuming the last bottle in the Gamma Leporis A system. No matter how perfectly the longterm stasis/storage equipment aboard the ark had functioned, there had been only so much capacity aboard for amenities. In another few years the only wines anyone would be drinking would be those made on-planet.

The pleasantries may not have been entirely targeted at Neil himself, but he indulged in them nonetheless. God knew he spent enough evenings living the life of a pariah these days.

All too soon, Nadya and Olivia excused themselves to let governor and consul see to their business of the evening. The residual flavor of the Riesling soured in Neil’s mouth.

“I’ve reviewed a summary of the situation at the archaeological dig,” Brendt said when the euphony of the women’s voices had faded into the depths of the villa. “What in particular do you need to ask me about?”

Neil looked down, but felt Brendt regarding him steadily.

He knew what the governor was really asking: Why the Thwaa had taken an interest? The murder was one incident out of thousands. They rarely scrutinized occurrences so closely as to send Neil on-site, to filter the news to them via their own peculiar information-gathering methods.

The presence inside his mind gained coherence. Without words, as always, he received the directive, and knew what he was expected to say. It would not answer the governor’s unspoken question, but it would address the one he had actually asked.

“They just want to know what you would do if they hadn’t sent me to observe the case.”

Brendt frowned. “What will I do? Christ, Neil. What can I tell you? It’s a mess.”

Neil nodded. “I’m just relaying the message. I can’t say for sure, but I think it’s all right if all you do is speculate. As long as you do so sincerely, of course.”

Brendt bristled at the implied slur, but perhaps he read in Neil’s open gaze that it was meant as helpful advice, not as character assassination. He settled back on the sofa.

“It was only a matter of time until we had a homicide,” he began. “My hope was that it would be something cleaner. A headline that the majority could read and forget about the next day. After all, we have enough to keep us busy just building this colony. I’ll do what I can to steer things in that direction, try to make it seem routine—not that I like to think of murder as routine. But I have to admit I’m worried. The racial component may keep the whole business alive. The Aussie faction will argue for some sort of leniency. The Indonesians will be outraged at anything less than the death penalty.”

“No matter what you do, you’ll antagonize somebody,” Neil conceded. He spoke for himself; the Thwaa voice in his head had gone silent, leaving him once more as nothing but their listening post. “It’s a lose-lose.”

“Yes. God damn it.”

“So … what will you do?” Neil repeated.

“Stretch things out. Gather every last scrap of evidence.

Hear all the appeals. In the end, I’ll have to execute him, but I have to be sure anyone who might be on his side has had their chance to argue that he’s not guilty. We don’t have much of a backlog in our court system”—he tried to chuckle—“but I estimate the whole process will take half a decade. In the meantime, our society will simply have to cope with the turmoil, I guess.”

Neil saw that it was gnawing Brendt from the pancreas outward to be placed in a position of impotence. The least that Neil could do was cut short the conversation, spare him further embarrassment. A burst of communication told him the Thwaa had learned whatever it was they needed from the night’s conversation.

“That’s it?” Brendt queried, as soon as Neil had spoken.

“Apparently so,” Neil said.

The deep brow wrinkles remained on the governor’s face.

His mouth tightened.

Neil had feared the man would not relax. And why should he? Why should any human on the planet?

The Thwaa might not have put the issue aside. One of these times, the matters Neil investigated would cause the aliens to alter policy. The Thwaa rarely stirred, but when they did, their actions could go to extremes. As the Eridanin had learned.

“I’ve set aside a room for you across the patio,” Brendt said. “May we all have a good night.”

“Thank you. I’ll give my regards to Nadya in the morning, then.”

“Pleasant dreams, Neil.” The governor glanced away and pretended to sip his wine.

Sleep was the wisest use of the remainder of the night, but Neil was far too keyed up. He made a fire in the room hearth.

A real fire, using cordwood salvaged from the scrap of forest removed in order to erect the dwelling. The hearth was rigged to display artificial fire, with or without heat, but could be made to function in the literal way, with filters in the chimney that eliminated air pollution. It would rarely be used so, for per the charter, no living trees on Bjornssen would be cut down solely to provide recreational flame. Making the luxury available was Brendt’s indirect way of letting the Thwaa see how well he treated their representative.

Neil did not hesitate to strike the match. He had not asked for the job, but as long as he had it, he would accept the perquisites.

He pulled his palm computer out and attempted to sedate himself with the mundane task of organizing recent email into folders. Scanning the list, he noticed a folder he’d had few entries for lately, only two, sent twenty-seven lightyears ago to coincide with the arrival of the ark at Bjornssen. The folder was labelled FAMILY.

Thoughts of his niece, Whitney, now his only living relative—older than he now due to his sojourn in hibernation—brought a tender smile to his face. After tucking away her latest letters—gossipy text messages about all that had happened to the clan in the past one hundred fifty years—he was drawn to dip into the archive and open up the special farewell she’d made for him, so long ago.

A picture filled the small screen. Thanks to Whitney’s artistic skill and her computer, the scene appeared to be taken from life, but in fact, she had composed the elements.

It showed Neil standing in a vegetable garden, a toddler at his side. He and the boy, a tow-headed lad looking much as Neil had at that age, were examining the intricacies of a web a spider had made during the night. A spider of Earth, just as most of the plants in the garden were Terran. The locale was Bjornssen, however, as Whitney imagined it to be, with some sort of fanleafed trees by the house in the background. The aqua cast to the sky was uncannily close to the actual hue of a Bjornssen morning.

The spider was sterile, Whitney’s voice recording explained, its reproductive abilities removed so as not to disrupt the planet’s natural checks and balances. Like the food, the arachnid was meant to contribute to the transition from immigrant to native lifestyle. A little bit of the old country, to make an Earth fellow feel at home. Sunlight glinted off the droplets suspended on the web. The child was enraptured. The expression on the face of “Neil” was one of rich contentment, yet full of delight at investigating new things.

“Bon voyage , Uncle o’ mine,” the message concluded. “I’ll be expecting a picture of the real thing some time before I die.”

Neil let the audio track play a second time while he pored over the visual. The moisture in the corners of his eyes evaporated. He closed the file with a curt vocal command.

The image had steered him unwillingly to recall the Eridanin gallery Dimitri had showed him, and suddenly he was back in the moment, thinking of his job, and how he didn’t want it.

His memory turned inevitably to the first time he had met Thwaa in person. He had done so as part of the greeting committee giving the aliens a tour of the newly completed ark that they, in their conditional benevolence, had allowed humanity to construct. At one point, by his guests’ insistence, he found himself the lone escort of a Thwaa noble as they examined some of the passenger quarters.

Neil had seen pictures of Thwaa for the better part of seventy years, but it ill prepared him to navigate in confined spaces with one. He tried to drown his apprehension in his script, but the monologue on the finer points of coldsleep tanks did not distract him from the alien’s proximity. Its appendages floated about, evoking irrational fears of burns like jellyfish should it touch his skin. A brain with strings attached is how one early journalist characterized them. A monster tick with veins extending two meters beyond its body is what he would have said. It was safe to say that their race was a thousand generations removed from a gravity environment. Perhaps that was what made them the proper arbiters of who could, and could not, claim the habitable territory at the bottom of gravity wells.

Neil couldn’t tell if his companion was bored by his presentation or simply preferred not to comment. He doubted the alien could have had much real interest in chambers meant for beings who required spin or acceleration to maintain health. It certainly would never be able to visit again once the ship became operational.

Only when they had reached the end of the fifth identical level in the hibernation section did it break silence. The little speaker attached to its knobby “head” startled Neil by announcing in a perfectly synthesized and mellifluous, if androgynous, voice, “You will travel on this vessel?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Safe journey. It is a mighty undertaking.”

Its tone conveyed nothing impolite, but Neil reasoned that sarcasm would not be part of the translation protocols. “Don’t patronize me,” he said. The Thwaa had travelled between galaxies, for Christ’s sake.

“I was simply wishing you well, and stating the truth. It is a mighty undertaking to shape a world, and do it well. The attempt is to be commended.”

“Yet you’ve only given us one world. You’re allowing very slow emigration. You’re passing down the barest smattering of your technology.”

“Your species has control of its home star and planets.

That is all the edicts require. The colonization of Gamma Leporis A is an experiment. You have chosen your candidates with care. We will see what you make of your opportunity. To claim other stars, you must show you understand the intricacies of cooperation.”

“And you are the judges,” Neil said.

“I see that you understand.”

Neil eventually slept. Not well. His mind boiled over with the consequences of that day aboard the empty ark. What had he said that caused the Thwaa to designate him as their consul, to alter him, to change forever the role he had meant to play within the colony?

Just after dawn a knock rattled his door.

It was the governor, tousle-haired, obviously having just awakened. “A call came through. Something has happened at the archaeological site. Anything you, ah, can tell me about?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Neil said. “You have the advantage of me.”

Brendt stared. “You really don’t know?”

“I told you I didn’t.” The Thwaa presence echoed through the chambers of his mind, but passive as usual, monitoring only.

The governor looked as though he wanted to smile, but knew it was inappropriate to do so. “You may want to catch another transport, then. I’m sure your superiors will be interested in your observations. It seems that our hot-headed Aussie has turned up dead.”

A curiosity-piquing flight later, Neil landed at the caldera to find Dimitri already there with an expanded team of assistants, including a few specialists who rarely had reason to be part of a death investigation.

“You’ll want to wear this,” said a woman standing beside Dimitri. She offered Neil an oxygen mask and small tank to place on his belt.

“This is Natalie Lommond,” Dimitri said. “She’s an atmospheric chemist.”

When Neil had donned the apparatus, they led him to the pit where Barry Radner had been imprisoned.

Radner, or what was left of him, lay beside the rim, cushioned by a sheet of plastic and shielded from the sun by a tarp. The corpse was twisted into a configuration determined by whichever muscles had been the strongest, demonstrating how thoroughly he had been wracked by seizure. The fingertips were bloodied from his attempts to claw his way up the smooth, hardpan walls of the septic tank.

The face wore a rictus of agony. He had died hard. Neil turned away after the thorough glance demanded by official duty, glad the oxygen mask obscured his expression, and let the medical examiner and forensics experts continue to document their findings.

“We brought him up as soon as we could,” Vereshchagin said. “We made the standard resuscitation efforts, but his brain had been deprived of oxygen too long.”

Neil turned to Lommond. “Carbon dioxide poisoning?”

“Yes.” She stepped away, putting some distance between them and the Reaper’s harvest. “Not at all like carbon monoxide—that would have been as peaceful a way to die as I can think of.” She waved her hand out over the terrain, pausing to point at the pool of brine. “It came from there.”

“And still is,” Neil noted. The waters were bubbling.

“That’s just the dregs,” she explained. “We don’t even really need these anymore.” She fingered her own breathing apparatus. “But sometime during the night a giant pocket of CO2 burst free. The outgassing filled the basin we’re standing in. CO2 is heavier than the regular atmosphere. It hugged the ground as it spread, displacing the good air. Look at the number it did on the wildlife.”

The ancient lakebed, superficially as benign and picturesque as ever, contained innumerable small signs of death. A drift of prairie wrigglers lay in the lee of a stout cactus. To the left of that, the sun beat down on the lifeless husk of some sort of hairy snakelike creature, twisted into a helix by its final paroxysms. No twittering or scuttling or buzzing noises reached their ears—only the susurrus of wind through the sparse clumps of grass, the murmur of voices in the background muffled by masks, and, once, the screech of a hugin.

The latter noise prompted Neil to look over at the pinnacle.

His bird—he assumed it was the same one—was still ensconced, maintaining whatever vigil its bright, native consciousness seemed to find necessary.

“That loudmouth is well above the toxic layer,” Lommond volunteered. She went on to indicate the other avians cruising the thermals like Terran carrion eaters. “Notice how few are trying to take advantage of this sudden supply of meat?

They’re aware of the contamination. The smart ones may soon realize they’re safe as long as they don’t remain on the valley floor. They can dive down, grab something, and retreat to a higher elevation, without coming to harm.”

For the next quarter hour, Neil listened to a summary of the night’s events from a gathering of key individuals. The surge of CO2 had never reached as far as the city where the majority of the excavators slept. None of them knew what was happening until too late for Radner. The only other people who had been poisoned were the guards. Dimitri had ordered them to spend the night at the top of the bluff, where they had an unobstructed view of not only the pit, but of the landscape leading from the ruins. That way they would be able to spot any team members sneaking out of camp to play vigilante.

The gas had filled the pit. The carbon dioxide in Radner’s bloodstream built up while he slept, waking him when it approached a lethal level. By the time his moans and thrashing alerted the guards, the latter had breathed enough themselves to be overtaken by nausea, dizziness, headaches, and muscle spasms. They stumbled to the camp with admirable poise for men being attacked by the very air around them, but by the time they had made clear to the camp residents what was occurring, it was too late to find and unpack oxygen masks and return to save Radner.

Fortunately the guards, by removing themselves from the lower elevation and inhaling a normal mix of atmosphere, had proceeded to recover. By the time of Neil’s arrival their symptoms consisted only of wooziness and sore muscles.

Radner was the only permanent casualty.

“I bear full responsibility for this,” Vereshchagin said, as the group around Neil shrank to just him and Lommond.

“It was a freak occurrence,” Lommond assured him. “It’s not your fault, Director.”

“That does not console me,” the archaeologist replied. “I could have done things to prevent Bilyang’s murder, and then Radner would not have been down here. No one would be dead. I am afraid this locale only reminds me of my failing. I am asking the governor for a transfer. The project will go on without me.”

Neil merely nodded. The director was not as inastute as Neil had judged him to be. By resigning, he saved himself the black mark of a dismissal.

“The project can still operate safely, can it not?”

Vereshchagin asked the chemist.

“Certainly,” Lommond replied. “I’ll install metering equipment to warn you if another burst comes out of the vent. As long as workers keep their masks nearby, they can dig without undue risk.”

Vereshchagin sighed, flexed his fingers, adjusted the filter in front of his nose. Neil wondered if he were biting back tears. “Very well,” he said. “Proceed. I will stay until the current disruption has run its course. Ten days, perhaps. After that, as far as I am concerned, this is one place I wish had never existed.”

“I can understand that,” Lommond said. Her demeanor implied she would have felt far more comfortable mouthing technical details about gas concentrations or volcanism, but she had inadvertently settled into the role of counsellor.

Neil walked out into the lakebed a hundred meters or so, ostensibly giving the specialist a chance to tender whatever further sympathy she could muster, but truthfully providing himself with some privacy.

In due time, as he expected, Dimitri joined him.

Neil was first to break the silence. “Vereshchagin is taking all this pretty hard.”

“The man has skills,” Dimitri replied. “I’m sure he’ll find something useful to do, at some level. It’s Radner who won’t get another chance.”

“True.”

Dimitri’s brows rose at Neil’s bitter tone. “There is some justice in that. If I thought that someone had done this deliberately, I would tell that someone, ‘Thank you.’”

Neil gazed back at his old friend steadily. “Surely you don’t think the Thwaa can sway geologic forces to such a precise degree as to arrange what we’ve seen here today?”

Dimitri paused. “No,” he said, sighing. “No. I suppose not.

In any case, my official report will declare the death to have been sheer happenstance. You understand that I was not asking for the record?”

“I know you weren’t,” Neil said. “Dimitri, sometimes shit happens, and other times you catch a break. Are you going to argue with good luck?”

The inspector chuckled, and went back to his duties.

Neil knew others would wonder at the convenience of the death. The point was, no one would be able to prove a thing.

The bizarre circumstances might incite comment for years, but that was better than keeping alive a spark of racial disharmony in a fledging colony. The case would close with a minimum of fuss. Such an elegant solution.

Neil had not expected this. That the Thwaa had done it he was certain. He had told Dimitri otherwise because he was equally confident that his overlords expected his discretion. If they had wanted to eliminate Radner in a public way, they certainly had the means.

Precisely how they had reached their decision he did not know. He could be sure it was their action not from any direct confession—the Thwaa would never deign to provide one—but from the cumulative intuition he had gained from seeing exactly what they had him investigate, and what they ignored. The implant remained in passive mode, as it usually did. In fact, until it awoke to give him his next assignment, hours or weeks or months from now, he could chose to forget the device was there, and pretend he was as human as any other Terran on Bjornssen.

A screech echoed across the valley. On the crag, the hugin was looking right at Neil. There it was, its race already witness to the eviction of one set of planetary tenants. He wondered if it were possible that they did know the answer to the big mystery of Gamma Leporis A-III. Perhaps they had seen just how and why the Eridanin had lost their lease.

Neil didn’t care. That was the past.

“Get the hell outta here,” he murmured toward the avian, as he would to an obnoxious little brother. Joyfully.

What did the past matter? If humans were to be proper stewards of this world, they had to look forward.

The hugin screeched, dived to the valley floor, and rose with a prairie wriggler in its claws. It paid no more attention to Neil.

A wave of giddiness surged from Neil’s toes to the crown of his head, settling at last in the region of his heart. He recognized the feeling. He had last felt it before the ark was launched, back before his transformation from pioneer to consul. Back when he was optimistic about the colony’s potential.

He drew out his notebook and called up his niece’s painting. A few weeks ago he had seen an acre near Landfall that would be perfect for a vegetable garden. He could put the house on a rise above the river that bisected the capital downstream. He had some architectural plans in his database.

For the first time on-planet, he began to examine them, noting little changes he might like to make.

The world was full of possibilities.