“What’ll you do if you find out?”
“When I find out, I’ll report to the Board.”
“What’ll they do?”
“They’ll … make sure everyone knows the truth.” That there are no monsters. And if she found otherwise, what would the Board do then?
“You’re a scientist, then?” Wood puffed a cloud of poisonous smoke up into the chimney shaft. It curled in the lamplight.
“Ye-es.” She did have a degree in geomatics. Not that she’d used her knowledge for years. In fact — and the thought filled her with unaccustomed dissatisfaction — for years she’d been no more than an elevated clerk. “Can we get back to this sighting?”
“I sighted nothing,” he said. “I was in here having breakfast with a mate. Heavy morning, thunder around. We hear the dogs start barking. Real barks, means an intruder.”
Clarissa privately doubted an animal’s noise could have meaning, but she let it pass.
“We grab the guns and go out. Mist’s as thick as a citysider.” He grinned sideways at her. “Couldn’t see your hand held out. The dogs is barking over by the pen. That’s what we thought, but you know how sound jumps around in a mist. We rush over, but the dogs aren’t there. The lums is stuck up one end, shitting themselves. Never seen them so scared. Then the dogs stop barking.”
Clarissa found she was holding her breath and let it out in annoyance.
“When we found them, about an hour later, they was halfway up the hill.” He jerked his head in the direction of the slope behind the hut. “We only found bones and bits of fur. Whatever it was ate most of them right there.”
So far, Clarissa hadn’t heard anything to contradict the village policeman’s theory. When she tested the area tomorrow, she’d find forensic proof.
“Don’t you think it could have been feral hounds?” she said.
Wood shook his head. “No hounds around here. Nothing to eat. And we would’ve heard them. And my dogs would’ve stayed with the flock.”
“The thing is, Mr Wood, we know what animals live on this planet, because we put them here. There are no large carnivorous constructs, except dogs, and no native ones.”
“You sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure. I work at the Board of Terraforming, remember? The early work was absolutely thorough. It’s well documented.”
“Documented. Right.” Wood knocked his pipe clean on the edge of the firepit and stood up stiffly.
He beckoned Clarissa to the door. “How many of your documenters have spent time in the hills lately?”
He opened the door. Yellow lamplight illuminated the dirt path, the stubbly grasses. Nothing else.
Clarissa was about to make a remark, when the rustling started. It got closer, turned into a pittering like raindrops. Like many tiny feet.
Many, many feet. Covering the ground completely.
The things undulated in segments, but not in the familiar way of Earth arthropods. There was something asymmetrical about the movement. They were flat, but not all the time. Whiskery antennae-like appendages, all turned towards the doorway. Skittering this way…
Wood slammed the door and leaned against it as Clarissa jumped back with an involuntary cry. He didn’t need to comment. Those things were alien.
“I reckon,” Wood said slowly, after a while, “You can’t expect a whole planet to ignore invaders.”
Clarissa smoothed her jacket, trying to slow her racing heart. “It doesn’t mean whatever attacked your dogs was native.”
“Not if it’s inconvenient for the Government, I bet it doesn’t.” He slapped the doorframe. “We’ve lived out here since the first domes. Don’t you think we know more about the planet than some fat Earth politician in the capital?”
“Why do the farmers hate the Government so much?” She’d never really thought about it until now.
“Is that what they tell you?”
“Well, all the strikes, the Union, the demands…” Reported in lurid detail in the press.
“Demands to be treated fairly.” His blue eyes flashed. “We slave to produce the basics of life, then the Government takes them away for treatment and taxes us on it. How would you like it if someone took the results of your work without proper payment, and didn’t acknowledge the value of it?”
Happens to me all the time, thought Clarissa. When was the last occasion my name appeared on a report? I haven’t had a pay rise in five years. And the work gets more boring every day.
“I might not like it,” she said, “But I don’t strike and put people in danger of eating untreated food.”
He sniffed. “Plenty of foods don’t need treating. Withholding produce is the only power we have.”
At least he had some power. Clarissa’s backside was sore, her feet were cold, and she’d wanted to use the outside privy again until she saw the flat things.
“I’m sure my tests will give us some answers in the morning,” she said tiredly. “Where should I sleep?”
“Please yourself,” growled Wood. He shuffled back to the firepit and lit his pipe again.
Ten minutes later, as she curled on the top shelf under the one thin blanket — it felt more like a sack, but she resolutely thought of it as ‘blanket’ — Wood’s footsteps made the floor creak and something heavy landed on the foot of the shelf.
“Don’t touch it,” was the surly reminder.
‘It’ was a stone from the fire, wrapped in noisome cloths. But it kept her warm the night long.
###
She slept badly, chased in her dreams by barking, crawling monsters smelling of smoke. When she woke, Jacob Wood had gone. The fire smouldered. She helped herself to more soup. It had thickened during the night and now resembled porridge.
Then she looked around for her equipment … gone! Cursing Wood for a thief and herself for a gullible fool, she threw open the door.
The caddy raised its head in surprise, ears flicking. It stood tethered at the bottom of the path, her gear loaded and ready.
Sorry, Mr Jacob Wood. Clarissa swallowed the bad taste of her own prejudice and closed the door quietly behind her.
The caddy nuzzled her arm when she untied the guide rope, as if it recognised her. Tentatively she scratched behind its ears, wrinkling her nose at the greasy feel of the coarse, curly hair, then smiling as it leaned into the scratching with its eyes half-closed in pleasure.
“Come on, then.”
She picked her way along the track that led around the hut to the hill behind. That was where Wood had found his dogs.
The caddy ambled beside her, breaking into a few steps of trot when she got ahead. Perhaps Wood’s hay had done it some good.
Low cloud hung over the valley and concealed the tops of the hills. The dull grey light was almost as dark as evening. Clarissa felt she walked in the bottom of a covered bowl. A cold, clammy bowl. But the severe, rocky landscape didn’t bother her as much today, even after the scares of last night. It was as if by sleeping here, she had innoculated herself.
She began taking samples and readings at the base of the hill. Never mind Wood’s opinion of terraformers. Never mind those skittering creatures. First get the facts.
The caddy stood patiently as she stopped every twenty metres or so to unload and reload.
The readings were what she’d expected — mainly Earth-derived vegetation and soil organisms, with the usual sprinkling of stubborn New Ceres microbes and lichens, especially on the rock surfaces. She dutifully recorded lum droppings and traces of lum genetic material in their footprints and stray curls of wool. She even found human genetic material on a flat rock halfway up the hill where, judging by a charred piece of earth close by, Wood or another herder was in the habit of stopping for a break.
As she reloaded the scanners, she noticed that the caddy’s coat was covered in fine droplets. Her own hair, too, was soaked. While she had been intent on recording data, the clouds had dropped further. Should she go back to the hut?
She
stood irresolute, alone in a damp grey world of silence. The track below her and the rocks on the valley floor were distinct, but ahead she could see only a few metres.
No, she’d come this far. The place Wood mentioned should be about here, ‘halfway up’ the hill. She tugged on the caddy’s guide rope. It dawdled reluctantly now. About fifty metres on, the path widened into a flat area in the lee of several boulders. Clarissa scraped samples from the boulders and dirt, and from a flat stone beside the boulders.
Aha. She squinted at the scanner screen in the gloom, lightened the backdrop. Her fingers, numb with cold, tried one adjustment, then another. An unknown element interfered with the familiar Earth-derivative and native material, including particles of canine hair and skin.
The scanner might be malfunctioning. She wiped condensation off the screen again. It wasn’t designed to function wet. Either that, or the early terraformers had missed something. Could the ‘tyger’ really exist?
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The caddy stirred, flicking its ears uneasily.
She was no bioengineer, for sure, but that unknown material looked like nothing she’d ever seen in the Board’s database, for Earth or New Ceres. Could it have somehow come from the other New Ceres landmass?
The caddy snorted and threw up its head, hooves skidding as it tried to spin around but was brought up by the guide rope Clarissa had looped over a rock. Gone was the placid pack-animal. In its place was a rolling-eyed ball of panicked muscle and flying hooves.
“Stop! Steady … oh shit.” Clarissa tried to catch her boxes as the rigging buckles snapped and her luggage slid off.
The straps caught around the caddy’s legs, forcing it to stand, sides heaving and breath pumping. It was shaking, and both ears pointed stiffly up the hill.
“Damn, damn.” Clarissa gathered the equipment together. “Stupid animal, it’s only thunder.”
The lid had come off the soil sample cases, and samples lay scattered. Stupid, stupid animal. Clarissa picked up the samples carefully, fuming. Animals were supposed to be in tune with nature, not jumping at every shadow.
Like when it tried to tell you about the path around the scree? said a cautious voice inside her.
What was it looking at?
She clicked the lid onto the box and stared up the hill. Cloud rolled over the uneven ground, softening the outline of the boulders and making it impossible to see anything clearly.
She reached out slowly and patted the caddy’s neck, warm and damp with sweat. It kept shivering.
“It’s all right, nothing’s there.”
As soon as she said it, she knew it was a lie. Something waited in the cloud. Its presence reached out and tickled the nape of her neck.
“Whoever you are, I’m armed!” Clarissa yelled into the murk. If only she could see…
The goggles! She fumbled in the box, dragged them out and over her head, ignoring the pain of pulled hair. She swiftly adjusted them so that the rainbow shape of the caddy was clear. Now she’d find whatever it was.
She swept the area in a slow arc, from the jumble of boulders on her left, up and across the hill, back down to where the path rose behind her. Nothing.
She tried again. Not one yellow flicker, not even a blue or green glow. If there was anything alive out there, it wasn’t producing any heat. Impossible.
A cough, wet and throaty. Quick thuds.
The caddy squealed and plunged away, she could see the flush of energy as it tried to untangle its legs, squealing all the time.
“What is it, what…” She looked everywhere, but no colours except the caddy.
Something buffeted her. A terrible smell, sweet-sour ammonia. She screamed, too, swung around but there was nothing there, what’s happening…
The caddy’s squeal choked. It lay on the ground, threshing, then stilled as she watched. Its limbs grew yellower.
Clarissa tore off the goggles, and screamed again, staggering back.
The tyger was real. It had teeth, lots of them, in a jaw that was in the wrong place on a body, not a head, overlapping scaly skin and big jumping legs and small clawed legs.
Her ears buzzed. If she fainted, at least she wouldn’t feel any pain.
It spoke. Hard syllables crackling up and down a non-human scale.
No stripes, she thought hysterically. It’s not really a tyger.
It spoke again. Only this time in a human voice. “…preserve anonymity at all costs.” Followed by more crackly alien sounds.
Clarissa wondered if she were going mad. The human voice was Assistant Secretary Estaban.
Then she realised that the voice came from a line of metal seemingly embedded in the creature’s ridged skin. A communication device?
“Help!” she tried. “Don’t hurt me!”
The creature made a rumbling sound in the back of its body and crept closer. She couldn’t take her eyes off the teeth, or rather, long serrated lines of gum. Blood and pieces of grey hair stuck to them.
Alien voices creaked from the metal device. Then Estaban again. “I’m terribly sorry about this, de Gent. We can’t risk anyone else knowing. Nothing personal.”
The relief Clarissa had felt dissolved into cold fear again. “What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“We didn’t expect you to find anything.” Estaban’s voice was overlaid by the alien sounds. Crackling, abrupt sounds, like an order.
The foul-smelling thing seemed to grin at her. She didn’t bother stepping back. Estaban was playing some game with these … aliens. Real aliens, not New Ceres natives.
Her life did not flash before her, but she did think hopelessly of the time she’d wasted. All the things she’d have no chance of doing…
The creature coughed, like when it attacked the caddy. She felt sorry for the caddy. If only she’d fastened those rigging buckles properly.
She shut her eyes, mostly against the sting of the ammonia.
Then fell backwards, sharp pain in her ears from the sound of the explosion.
Explosion?
Cautiously she opened her eyes. The alien lay twitching in a mass of purplish liquid. It half-rose, and another explosion echoed around the hills. Its jaws split and bits of flesh and liquid spattered her legs.
Jacob Wood smiled grimly at her. “Told you we had tygers.”
###
She couldn’t stop crying, to her embarrassment, and blurted out the story of the voices and Estaban. Wood brought his boot down hard on the communication device and shot it again for good measure. Then he retrieved the bloodstained rigging from the caddy’s body, clicking his tongue at the waste.
“What will I do?” wailed Clarissa. “I can’t go back to Prosperine.” “You said they want to hush this up, right?” Wood squatted beside her. “They won’t follow it up. If you go to ground for a while, you’ll be right. Get a new identity.”
“But where?” She wiped her face forlornly.
He patted her back clumsily. “It’s a big planet.”
“Scandal at the Feast of Saturn” by Tansy Rayner Roberts
With apologies to Agatha Christie for the theft of her Christmas pudding.
Part I: Coffee and Scandal
You could tell by the look on her face that Mme. Valeria Marchmont thought she had done something exceedingly original. Her dining parlour was decked out as one of Prosperine’s more upmarket coffee houses, complete with trestle tables, newspapers and an official food license displayed above the counter.
My mistress, Duchesse Claudine Augustille Recherche Dubois — known more generally as ‘La Duchesse’ or, in certain circles, ‘The Great Detective’ — smiled, and refrained from mentioning that she had attended several parties employing exactly this theme in the last week.
Do not think that by ‘mistress’ I mean that I am La Duchesse’s lover. I serve her in the far more useful position of secretary, biographer and occasional source for scandal. Among La Duchesse’s peers, it is necessary to create at least three major sca
ndals a year in order to preserve some degree of social status. Having a male secretary who sleeps, always, in an adjoining room to my lady serves as a kind of default scandal, freeing up her time from the usual tiresome amours with married government officials, starving artists and philandering rakes.
As Mme. Marchmont swung away from La Duchesse to greet her other guests, I took the opportunity to enquire (discreetly, of course) whether our hostess had yet revealed why she had invited us to her country house party.
“Afraid not, Pepin,” said La Duchesse. We’ll have to settle our wager later.”
During our long and uncomfortable journey in the hired phaeton, we had debated why the wife of the Anglais Ambassador was so eager to include us both (and at such short notice) in what is usually a family festival. I was convinced that our hostess intended to use this weekend to confront the long-established rumour that her husband had conducted an affair with La Duchesse one year earlier; La Duchesse maintained that Mme. Marchmont was too obsessed with propriety to tread such dangerous social territory, and that we had instead been summoned to solve a murder, or clear up some equally embarrassing mystery within the family.
“It must be something interesting, Pepin,” she had stated with barely-suppressed glee, “If my fame for swift and faultlessly discreet investigations has outweighed Valeria’s intolerance for scandalous women like myself.”
Unwisely, I had wagered thirty sous on the matter.
Mme. Marchmont ushered her other houseguests towards us. “May I introduce Bob and Catherine Stevens? Recently from Earth,” she added with exaggerated discretion.
“Refugees,” said Bob Stevens, bluntly. “Ms. Marchmont was kind enough to take us into her household until we get on our feet again.”
We all smiled, as if we did not know that the high public status of the Ambassador made it impossible for Mme. Marchmont to not take in a refugee family. La Duchesse’s eccentric habit of living in hotels rather than maintaining properties in all of her favourite cities (except the mansion in New Switzerland where she kept her imaginary invalid husband) was the only reason that she had been spared a similar display of public duty.
We all sat at the ‘public table’ in the centre of the room. Mme. Marchmont clapped her hands, and her trained baristas came forward to pour coffee from shoulder-height into elegant dishes.