27 Erbe 1117: Gashuumi – Tlianke/Hinterworlds (1206 B527769-7 O:1104 923 Na M4 V M9 D)
I was tired after the previous day, but Saahna woke up annoyingly early and decided I needed to be awake. And not for any bunk time either; she had something else planned for us today. I groaned but dragged myself to the fresher.
We wound up on a ground-bus with about a dozen other sophonts, heading for a mountain about an hour’s drive inland. Halaphon is a volcanic island, though its last major eruption had been a few thousand years ago. It had minor eruptions every few hundred years, the most recent of which was about twenty years ago.
There had been a ski resort on the peak that was basically destroyed. The owners had converted it into a hiking and climbing resort. Even though it was still covered with snow every local winter. I guess they didn’t want to put out more infrastructure that might be destroyed.
Especially since it was in one of their “resorts” where they couldn’t upgrade their technology.
Saahna had scheduled us for a hike. I had figured that I could walk fine, but this “hike” had a lot more climbing up and down slopes than I would have expected. And the volcanic rock had an annoying tendency to shift underfoot. Saahna stayed with me, but we were near the back of the group when we got to the first stop.
She was laughing. “You need to get outside more!”
“Hey!” I said. “I do most of my work on board. I don’t spend a lot of time climbing volcanoes.”
“Tell me about it!” said the one member of the group who had been behind us. He sat heavily on the bench next to me and looked over at us.
I looked back, frowning slightly. “Yeah, I’m glad we weren’t last in line. Derek Kodai, Saahna Denan.” I gestured. “And you are?”
“Telvan. Telvan Harris.” He stopped to take a drink from his water cylinder and took a deep breath. “From the Tellman Archipeligo.”
The Tellman Archipeligo was a large cluster of several dozen major and far more minor islands on the far side of Gashuumi. I wondered why he had come this far away for a holiday.
“Good to meet you,” I said, offering what turned out to be a sweaty handshake. “We’re actually Travellers. But we’re doing ship maintenance while we’re here, so we’re taking some time off.”
“Travellers? Hells, I don’t meet a lot of you! Tell me, what’s it like! Out there! Planets? Aliens? Have you been attacked?”
I regretted my statement as he continued, but Saahna quickly stepped in.
“Yeah, we are, but… we’re just trying to have some time to ourselves this week, OK? You don’t know what it is like on a ship; we’re all on top of each other, and there’s basically no privacy. We just got contracted, and… we’re trying to have some time to ourselves. If you know what I mean. So I don’t want to be rude–normally, we would be happy to talk to you–but we really kinda want some privacy this week. So… if you don’t mind…”
I wish I could learn the look she was giving him. He quickly grabbed his pack and stood up.
“Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to intrude on your… Congratulations on your contract!” He quickly made his way to the rest of the group, where a cart was handing out sandwiches of some kind.
“You really need to stop that!” she said as he left. “You don’t need to try to make friends with everyone you meet.”
“It’s a Trader thing. You never know where your next contact might come from.”
“Yeah, and if you hadn’t picked up a datastick from a random person on Kupakii, then we would be under a lot less scrutiny now.”
“Hey! I thought you said that any of us would have done that!”
“Then? Yes. Now? With the reputation, we’re getting? No. We need to become less conspicuous than we are. So… Stop trying to make contacts and try to spend time with me.”
I smiled at that. “That’s all you had to say.”
“Good!” She tilted her head towards the cart. “Lunch?”
—-
We ate an uninspired sandwich of some leafy something and something vaguely fishy. And an “energy” drink that was basically sweetened caffeine. Break completed, we proceeded to the lip of the crater. We looked down into it as our guide described the last eruption while pointing out active fissures that were still releasing steam. The air supposedly smelled of sulfur, but I declined to take off my combo mask to see if she was accurate.
Sightseeing over, the group started back down to the ground-bus. It was easier, but I was hurting more from the climb than I was happy to admit, and we were still near the back of the group.
We had been descending for a while when we reached a site our guide had told us about earlier. It was called “The Grinder,” a place where the ocean came in through a lava tube and created an almost constant whirlpool. Our guide had just finished her talk, and the main group was starting to leave as we arrived.
I took a few minutes to look at the whirlpool and grab a drink from my water cylinder. Then I pulled my pack back on and groaned. “OK, let’s go.”
“Sure.” Saahna hadn’t even taken her pack off. “No need to keep everyone else waiting on you…”
“Hey!” I heard a strained gasp from behind us. “Wait up!”
It was Harris, the sophont who had tried talking to us earlier. “Yeah, I know I’m bringing up the rear. But… would you mind hanging a bit and letting me go the rest of the way down with you? I don’t want to feel like I was the one holding everyone else up.”
“Sure.” I saw Saahna frown as I said that, so I quickly added, “But, not too long. We don’t want to keep everyone else waiting.”
“Yeah, sure.” He leaned against the railing and looked down at the Grinder for a while.
Saahna was showing her impatience, and even I was getting annoyed. I finally pulled my pack back on.
“We’re going to…”
“Did you look at the Grinder?” He asked suddenly. His tone of voice was completely different; even Saahna narrowed her eyes.
“Yeah? We both did. So, can we…”
“There are creatures that live in the Grinder, believe it or not,” he continued. “Some are filter feeders. They attach themselves to the walls and collect what they can from the current. Others are opportunistic. Those live in cracks and crevices, and when something circles by, they launch themselves out and grab it, then return to their gap with their prey.
“Then, there are a few species that live in there. They constantly swim against the vortex, grabbing anything that the current has brought in. It takes a lot of energy to swim against a vortex like that all the time. So they’re the strongest in the Grinder. And they get the choicest pick of what the ocean has swept in. Even the big predators, the ones who might be top of the open ocean’s food chain, can’t survive the Grinder.”
Saahna and I were looking at each other. I noticed that she had unzipped her vest and put her hand inside. I was regretting having left my body pistol in our room myself.
“So… you’re a biologist, Mr. Harris?” I didn’t want to come out and ask him what he was trying to say.
He turned to look at us, but not with the expression of a tired, out-of-his-element hiker. He was staring straight at me.
“Many sophonts from the Imperium, or the Sphere, or elsewhere… they think we’re just an insignificant polity. They’re big fish back in their big oceans, and we’re just a bunch of helpless independents. But then they get here, and they’re in the Hinterworlds. In the Grinder. Where we have learned to survive on our own.
“You might want to keep that in mind.”
Saahna was now openly aiming her gauss pistol in his direction. “Who the hells are you?”
“The last sophont out here who will talk to you instead of just taking action. We’re giving you that courtesy.”
“Answer her!” I said, angrier than I should have been. He wasn’t in the best shape, I was pretty sure that even I could handle him, and Saahna was Imperial Marine trained! He didn’t have a weapon that I could see. But he clearly wasn’t concerned.
Then, his demeanor instantly changed. He saw Saahna, let out a high-pitched shriek, and took several steps back up the trail, waving his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Sorry, I didn’t realize you were that concerned about your privacy! Sure, sure… you just go on ahead!”
“What?” I shook my head. “Look, that sounded like a threat. Do you want something? Fine, everyone wants something. Just tell us what it is.”
He took a few more steps away. “What? No! I was just… I was just looking at the Grinder! Look, please! I’m not trying to slow you down or intrude on your week. Please!”
He gasped, then continued. “Look… you go on. Just… tell them to wait for me, OK?”
“No!” I shouted. “What the hells were you just saying?”
“I didn’t say anything!” he wailed. “I was looking at the Grinder and… she suddenly is pointing a gun at me! Please! I wasn’t trying to hurt you!”
I frowned. I know how to read sophonts. He was in a near-panic. Completely different from how he had been behaving just a few seconds ago. I had no idea what was going on, but I waved a hand at Saahna and she lowered the gauss pistol.
“OK, fine. We’ll head on down to the pickup point. You follow in a bit. And… don’t even mention this. To anyone. Ever. OK?”
He had began frantically nodding almost immediately. “Yeah, yeah. Sure. Whatever you say! Just… don’t hurt me, OK?”
“We won’t. Unless you ever say anything about this. You know, we aren’t the only people from our ship here.”
He seemed confused by that but nodded vigorously. “Of course! Never! I… won’t say a thing! Just… go! OK?”
I nodded to him and Saahna, and the two of us proceeded down the trail. Behind me, I thought I heard him throwing up, but I didn’t look back to see.
We were about a hundred meters down the trail before Saahna finally spoke. “What the hells was that all about!”
I had been rolling that around in my head myself. “I… it’s almost like he was possessed by someone. Or something. It was like he was two different people.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He was a confused, incompetent hiker. Then he was suddenly meson-focused on threatening us. Then he had no idea what was going on again. Either he is way better than me, in which case he’s wasting himself on games like this, or… he was different. Somehow.”
She groaned. “Who have we pissed off this time?”
“You’ve been with me every time I have done something with this system! You tell me!”
She sighed. “I told you earlier, we really need to start lowering our profile.”
“Yeah. I’m ready to start agreeing with you.”
We descended in silence, with occasional minor observations. We finally reached a point above a small waterfall where the rest of the tour was sitting around and waiting for us. The tour guide made no attempt to disguise her annoyance.
“What took you so long?”
I shrugged. “Sorry. I’ve apparently spent too much time on the ship where my only challenge is climbing to the upper deck. I’m pretty much beat.”
She frowned. “Have you seen Harris?”
“Yeah, he was right behind us. He got to the Grinder just as we were leaving. .”
She was annoyed but didn’t seem to question my statement. “Well, he’s the only one we’re waiting on. And we need everyone to catch the ground-bus back to the resort. So… we’ll wait here for a bit.”
It was about fifteen minutes before Harris arrived. He looked around, saw Saahna and me, and quickly made his way to the far side of the group. Our guide was satisfied and led us along a final ten-minute trail to the parking area where the ground-bus was waiting.
We all made our way on board and found seats. The guide spent the trip back to the resort talking about other hikes on the island and describing the other activities available at the resort. Wing-gliding sounded fun, but I wasn’t sure how well it would work in an atmosphere this thin. But, at the moment, I was tired enough that I would be happy to spend the rest of the day in my bunk.
—
Back at the resort, we returned to our room. We were barely inside when Saahna turned to me.
“What the hells was that about?”
I had dropped my pack and was peeling off my sweat-drenched clothes. “I have no idea. I’ve heard of ‘dual-personalities,’ but this was the first time I’ve ever encountered what I thought was a real one. It was like he was two different people. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She was shaking her head. “But… why that? Even if he had some psychological problem, why would it manifest that way? That was pretty clearly a threat. Against us. He would have had to know who we are and what we’ve been up to.”
“You said it yourself; we have been getting ourselves a bit of a reputation.”
“Yeah, and we need to watch that.”
“Trust me, I’ve learned that lesson loud and clear. I’m definitely going to be more cautious from now on.”
She grimaced. “Really?”
“Yeah, especially since you and I will spend a lot more of our downtime together.” I took a few steps forward. “You can keep me in line.”
She stepped back, waving me away. “How about you hit the fresher first. You really didn’t have a good time out there today.”
—-
We both spent time in the fresher, then went downstairs to eat. Saahna led us to a smaller place called Early Late Night. A band played in front of an empty dance floor, but we found a booth and immediately set the sonic dampeners.
We ordered a seafood platter, apparently the only thing they had here, and a couple of drinks. Once our waiter had brought them, I activated the scrambler and turned to her.
“Well, what do we do now?”
She shook her head while skewering a fried bit of fish. “I don’t know. Someone isn’t happy about us being here, but without telling us who they are or what they want from us, there isn’t much we can do.”
I grabbed what turned out to be a surprisingly spicy something and responded once I quit coughing. “Yeah. We’re part of the Hinterworlds Alliance, so they wouldn’t bother us. And Tlianke still seems to think that we are friends of theirs, and we haven’t done anything to change that opinion. So I have no idea who this was. Beyond the fact that they aren’t pleased with us being here, they didn’t have much to say.”
“Yeah. All I got was ‘No Imperials Allowed.'”
“And that’s about all they said. Why they went through all that effort to tell us that is a question. We’ve already set a Jump schedule that takes us out of Tlianke space. They know we’re leaving. So why a warning?”
I frowned, thinking, then grabbed another of those spicy things. Once you got past the immediate shock, they were pretty good.
“I think this is someone new. As if we needed even more problems.” I closed my eyes, recalling the scene, then opened them.
“I’m convinced we were talking to two different people. That Harris guy was terrified when he saw you pointing your pistol at him. He really had no idea what was going on. And the person we had been talking to before that? That was someone completely different.”
She tilted her head. “Mind control? Are you seriously suggesting that?”
“Well… maybe? Look, we know a lot of sophonts out here in the Hinterworlds have implants. The Anubian Trade Coalition has embraced them. Basically, everyone back at Gimisapun had them as well. So, maybe some people here have them too. Given that Tlianke loves their surveillance, it’s reasonable to think that they may have offered some of their citizens access to Implants–which are way above the tech level here–in exchange for being able to ditch their monoculars?”
She nodded slowly. “I know how well you can read people, so I’ll assume you are right. So, now what?”
“Not sure. I suppose he could have been a humaniform robot, but that makes even less sense.”
“Yeah.” She paused, thinking.
“Didn’t your ‘girlfriend’ back on Gimisapun have one of those implants?”
“Well, yeah. But…”
“Was she hot?”
I hesitated. “Not really…”
“She was really good at fucking?”
I grimaced, closing my eyes. “Hey, I never asked you about anyone you were with!”
I could tell she was smirking, even though my eyes were closed. “OK, what did she know that I don’t?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Well, there was this one thing…”
She laughed. “I guess you have something to show me after all.” She looked around. “Let’s pay our bill and get back to our room.”