Startled, I jerk my hands back and up, splaying the fingers of the empty one to show that I am unarmed—unlike the man who has just violently thrust the door open. “Take your debt peddling somewhere else!” he growls.
My heart leaps into my throat at the sight of the weapon trained on me, and I yank my gaze up to his face, hoping to connect with him. “I’m not here to peddle debt,” I tell him, my eyes glowing indigo in a way that wouldn’t be seen on anyone from Morgan Industries. “In fact, if you have another debt-free enclave, then we’re happy to make your acquaintance,” I add brightly.
“Lower your weapon,” Cleve barks out from somewhere behind me on the left. “We’re not here for trouble or to force you into anything.” His words might back mine up, but his tone is not friendly.
“Listen, we have an agreement that this island belongs to the University, so you need to pack up your bags and get out of here,” the man snaps back. In my peripheral vision, I see the gun start to drift, and my eyes dart down to it. It’s a two-handed laser rifle similar to the one Damian was carrying in the Morgan dome, and it’s now pointed off to my left, at Cleve instead of me. “This legally belongs to us.”
“We didn’t know this island belonged to anybody,” I explain. “We just knew there were people on it who might need help.” I stay facing the man from the University, but I turn my head to direct my words at Cleve, too, as I continue, “If we can all put our weapons away, we can just talk and have a friendly conversation.” Looking back at the stranger, I add, “We’re not here to take anything from you. We’re not from the Morgan domes.” I shift my left arm, drawing attention to the dazzling xenofungus tattoo twisting all around my exposed forearm—definitely not something most Morganites would choose as a permanent decoration. “We just want to talk.”
“Help? The kind of help I need is not likely to be found anywhere other than the University,” he replies a bit pompously. “I appreciate your offer, but unless you happen to know how to launch a ship back to Earth or open some sort of transstellar gateway so that we can liberate the planet, I don’t think you can help me.”
“Liberate which planet?” I ask, confused by the terminology.
“Earth! Perhaps you’re too young to remember how utterly horrible it got. It’s now over a hundred years later. How much worse must it be today! Those people need our help, not me. I am open to fresh ideas on this, but I already have someone who’s very helpful with that, and it’s not you.”
I ignore that burn, still puzzling over what he said earlier. Liberate Earth? From what? It’s not like there was one solitary oppressive regime destroying the planet, which he is certainly old enough to know, judging by his wrinkles and shoulder-length white hair. We were probably about the same age when Unity left Earth.
Well, at least he’s pointing his weapon at the ground now. Cleve does the same, with a pointed, “Ensign,” that gets Redd to lower hers. The ranger is nowhere to be seen, so who knows the status of their weapon. Addressing the man from the University, Cleve says, “So then let us talk with whoever is in charge here, and we can see if there’s any common ground. There might be something we can work out that’s mutually beneficial.”
“I am one of the co-leaders of the expedition,” the man calmly informs Cleve, enunciating each word carefully. “And right now, you’re talking with me, so you have to treat with me. If I see fit to bring in my co-leader, I will.” He pauses for a moment, and I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes. Then he plasters a smile across his face. It’s such an artificial grin, it’s almost comical. It’s not helped by the fact that his gun is still in his hands, albeit not pointed at any of us. “You say you’re not from the Morgan domes, and I don’t think that you can help me directly, so what is it here that you want? We don’t need rescuing, so you can just leave, if you want. Was there something that you needed here that you think for some reason we can provide? Or something unusual that you have, that you could provide us?”
A memory flashes through my mind, a lunch with Deirdre. She’s being pushed more and more into a management position, and that includes training on soft skills for dealing with people. This most recent session she’s telling me about was specifically geared towards those with a technical background, and some of it sounds laughable to me, with my years of sales floor experience. I wonder now whether this fellow sat through the same seminar back on Earth. It’s like he’s following a playbook for how to do a negotiation—and not a very well written one. For one, you’re not supposed to sound condescending.
“You don’t need help, but what about all the people who were in the cryopods here? What’s their status?” I ask. That is, after all, what we want. And unbeknownst to him, we have already done something for him, which is redirect the Shadow of the Deep that was headed straight this way. But I don’t bring that up. We’ve not established enough mutual trust (or even respect) for broaching that topic.
“They’ve been dead for thirty years. The ship crashed,” he says without concern and as though this should be obvious.
“We’d like to see the evidence of that,” I tell him.
Footsteps sound in the corridor behind the man, and a young woman appears. Well, younger than him, anyway. She looks around thirty, so probably one of the first crop of Chiron kids. She’s dressed similarly to him in practical work clothes with plenty of pockets, but with the addition of a soft gray stole. With the different angle she’s standing at, I can see a University of Chiron patch on one shoulder. “Alakai,” she starts to address the man, but she swiftly corrects herself. “Er, Dr. Van Hoff, who are these people?” Her quizzical regard is a marked improvement over Dr. Van Hoff’s suspicious one. “Why all the guns?”
“Ah, Pastor Thara. These visitors not from the Morgan domes were just leaving.”
Oh, right, right… there was that whole religious vibe I got off Damian. Something about initiating into the Sanctuary. Maybe I should say something about that, to indicate I’ve talked with people from the University before and we aren’t such strangers. Damian had implied that cybernetic adaptations to Chiron were part of the philosophy of the University, but I don’t see any on Thara or Alakai—certainly nothing as obvious as Damian’s bionic eye.
Thara tilts her head, regarding me closely. “Something has brought you here to this place,” she observes in an almost lyrical tone. “There are many paths in life. What path has brought you here that you cannot leave as my co-leader has asked?”
I blink in confusion again at how these people speak. Is she asking me why I won’t just go away? Or is she actually curious about what’s brought us here? Or is it more spiritual than that, and we’re going to go down yet another Child of Chiron path? I can stand here puzzling over it all, or I can dig into what these people mean.
I start with Alakai, sharing a tidbit so that he can see we do have useful information. “I’m a little taken aback by your terminology, Dr. Van Hoff, that Earth needs to be liberated. I do remember what Earth’s like; I grew up there. I lived there until I was in my mid-twenties, same as you, probably. A handful of people just turning a spaceship around and heading back to Earth is not going to solve Earth’s problems. That’s why people left to begin with. But we do have some sensor readings that a new ship from Earth may be on the way.” Sal’s visions, they’re pretty much sensors, right? “So you may get your wish—a functional spaceship may be approaching.” And if there’s no coup underway as it enters atmosphere, maybe it will land more safely than Unity did.
I turn my attention to Pastor Thara. “Why can’t we just leave? We’re from recently opened cryopods,” I say, gesturing between me and Cleve. “So, you’ll forgive us if we’re a little sensitive around the topic of cryopods that did not open properly. I want to see those pods so that I can know for myself that nobody there is saveable. There could be hundreds of people here who are still stuck in stasis and could be helped. That’s why I’m not going to leave—because both our groups can get something out of an exchange here.”
“Yeah, nobody looked for us for thirty years, so I don’t want to leave these people like that,” Cleve adds earnestly.
“We respect that whatever you’re doing here is important enough work to bring you out of your Sanctuary. Honestly, we are not trying to waste your time. We really do think there’s some mutual benefit in discussing matters.”
“Whatever,” Van Hoff says, slinging his gun back behind him. “If you just want to see the pods, I don’t care about that. If there’s a ship, I have more important things to do.” He spins away and brushes past Thara. “This is your problem now,” he tells her. “Whatever you want to do with these people, fine. If they just want to look at dead cryopods? Fine.” And then he is gone. I suspect we’ll see him again before we leave to follow up on what we know about the ship from Earth. He’s got an idea in his head now, though, and needs to see it through. The man has focus, I’ll grant him that.
Thara makes no move to usher us anywhere. She just stands there in the doorway, regarding us with her serene expression. “Great!” Cleve says. “Let’s go look at the cryopods. So if you could direct us there, that’d be mighty nice.”
“I understand that you were ignored for so long. That would hurt, to just be left behind. Forgotten.”
“Yeah,” Cleve mutters forlornly. “Nobody came to look.” He really is sore about that. One of these days we may find out that someone actually did, and then he’ll be beating himself up about that.
“I understand your desire to want to see these people. I can assure you that they have all passed, and they passed long before we arrived. I have said a prayer to help them on their way, so you need not worry yourself about their passing. Have you thought about your own mortal passing, however? How that might come one day? And what you will do?”
¡Ay! Has he ever! Cleve thinks about that and all the possible ways it might occur every day! Me, I’ve had enough time with the Prophet of Chiron lately that I’m not really keen on another spiritual experience. I guess she really wasn’t trying to get rid of us earlier. All that talk about paths and what’s holding us here was more existential. Perhaps she senses my hesitation to engage this topic, as she turns her riddled speech more directly at me. “Of the many Paths in life, which one led you here? And how do you choose by which one you will leave?”
Well at least she’s nowhere near as acrimonious as Sal. She is expressing legitimate concern for our souls, not trying to arrange a power-sharing agreement. And she’s shown compassion for the dead. And to that point, I tell her, “We’d still like to see the cryopods because there could be important medical data related to how long they lived and under what conditions they died. That medical data could help inform humanity’s ability to adapt to this planet. We have data from some cryopods that scientists at the Stepdaughters of Chiron are studying right now related to that. Not everybody has all the technological advantages that the University does. Working with native Chiron life is an avenue that people have to have available to explore. We’ve been working closely with some native Chiron life, and that’s another reason that we can’t just leave your island without having our questions answered. Something happening on this island is disruptive to creatures that we call xenodragons—I don’t know if you have the same term for them?” She nods in understanding. Probably the University got that name from an information exchange with the Stepdaughters. “This was a popular nesting site for them and now they find the island literally repulsive.” What path led me to this island? My connection to the life of Chiron. It’s burning in my eyes now as I get worked up about the problems this place is causing for Gale.
Pastor Thara finds something in my answer acceptable. Having nothing to hide, she agrees to let us inspect the cryopods. “We are conducting important research here into the nature of the creature that is this island,” she shares. “There’s a sonic repulsor, but it’s just temporary. And let me assure you, it does not hurt the xenodragons. Once we’re done with our survey, we won’t leave that here. But for now, we need it. The xenodragons disrupt our research. You would not be able to visit the cryopods if the xenodragons were nesting here.”
Well, we probably could, but I don’t go into that. Instead, I ask, “How much longer does this subsonic research still have to last?”
“Just a matter of weeks,” she tells me, but she also clarifies that the research itself doesn’t create the noise, a specific tool for keeping xenodragons away does. I don’t push further on that front. Xenodragons will only be inconvenienced for another month or so, and this way we stay amicable with these University folks. I look to Cleve to see if he’s satisfied. His brow is furrowed and he looks uncomfortable, but that’s pretty standard for him. He raises no objections, which is as good as agreement.